Running on Fumes
by WRTRD
Summary: Furious at Castle for showing evidence to an outsider–a flight attendant–and hurt by his dismissal of her, Beckett decides to take action. But so does he. AU set immediately after 4x20, "The Limey." Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.

"Yes, sir, I know that it's a spur-of-the-moment request, but I haven't taken a day off since I came back on the job eight months ago. I have eighteen days of vacation in the bank. More, actually, since I have some left over from last year. And from, um, before." She's sitting in her boss's office, on the most uncomfortable chair ever made. Montgomery had nice ones, but Cruella deVil here had replaced them with chairs that the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition would have endorsed.

Gates is giving her a look that could ice over a pond in August, but Beckett is emotionally clad in a head-to-toe down coat. She's not going to blink, not going to yield. If she has to go to Burke and get him to write a letter for a week of sick leave, she will. She's stared down people as tough as Gates. Tougher, some of them, and more than a few were holding a gun. Gates is wearing a suit, a suit with a skirt, not pants. Always this or a dress. Interesting. Making a statement. Yeah, well she's making a statement of her own, though it has nothing to do with fashion.

The captain removes her glasses and places them on top of her alarmingly neat desk. After straightening two pencils that already appeared to be perfectly aligned she looks sternly, if slightly less icily, at Beckett. "I understand that you've always been reluctant to take vacation, Detective. Not sensible. Foolhardy, even. Nonetheless, you've got a case to wrap up."

"Sir, Esposito and Ryan have a good handle on it, and Detective Hunt–"

"Detective Inspector Hunt."

"Right. Detective _Inspector_ Hunt was very helpful." Under other circumstances she might have been interested in him. Smart, dedicated to his job, good looking, if a little cocky. He was way too eager to shed his towel in front of her, speaking of cocky. She represses a smile. But the circumstances she's in–well, no. It would have been a rebound, even if she's not technically rebounding from anything. She and Castle haven't been. Haven't. Shit. "I'm sure that Esposito and Ryan can handle the paperwork without me. Everything's in order." She just needs to be out of here, now. This minute. Needs to take control of her life, such as it is.

Gates looks at her again, this time almost kindly. "Detective Beckett, I don't mean to interfere, but is everything all right?"

"Yes, sir. I guess you're right about my foolhardiness. I guess I realized that I need a break."

"Like mere mortals, Detective," Gates says after a short silence, then picks up her glasses and waves her hand over her paperwork. "Go. I'll expect you back a week from Monday."

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

She hightails it to her desk, grabs her bag and coat, and walks over to her colleagues. "You guys don't mind finishing up? Sorry to leave you with it. I gotta go."

"Beckett?" Ryan asks. "You sure you're all right?"

"Yup. Good. Just need a little change of scenery. See you in a week." Rather than wait for the antediluvian elevator to heave its way up, she takes the stairs. Besides, she doesn't want the boys to ask her any more questions, such as scenery she'll be looking at, since that scenery is nothing more than the inside of her apartment.

A train is entering the subway station just as she reaches the platform, and she's home in minutes. As soon as she's inside she changes into pajamas, opens a bottle of wine, and sits in her oversized armchair. Tilting the glass back and forth in her hand and watching the liquid swirl around, she goes over the conversation she'd had just two days ago with Lanie. She'd told her that she didn't want to lose what she and Castle had, and when Lanie asked what that was she'd said a friendship. "No," the doctor had responded, "What you and I have is a friendship. What you and Castle have is a holding pattern. How long can you circle before the fuel runs out?"

Now, wiggling her toes as she stretches her legs out across the rug, she morosely addresses her Cabernet. "I guess it has run out. I guess we were running on fumes."

The wine doesn't answer, but it doesn't give her any grief, either. She pours another glass, and by the time she finishes that one she's feeling a little less sorry for herself and a little more pissed off at Castle. By the time she's staring at the residue of glass three, she's running on fumes of another kind. Fumes as in fuming. "See, Castle?" she says, though she has no idea where he is at the moment. "See?" She jabs her index finger into her chest. "You may be a writer, but I can play with words, too."

Broodily, she takes the first sip of glass number four. Where did Castle get off showing evidence to that flight attendant? The one with an obviously made-up name. Jacinda. Please. She'd probably changed it from Joan or Jean, some uncomplicated name. And where did he get off implying that she, Kate Beckett, is undesirably complicated, when being complicated used to be something that he liked about her? "And you let her drive your precious Ferrari!" She's on her feet now, and yelling. "What, two hours after you met her? I'd already known you for more than two years before I got to do that, and only because I grabbed the damn keys from your hand." She sits down hard, grimaces, and closes her eyes. A few minutes later she checks her watch. It's late. Way late. Is it too late?

Rick Castle has just returned to his loft from Kennedy Airport, where he'd driven Jacinda to the flight she's working back to Vegas. He tosses his car keys towards the bowl on the table by the door, but misses his target; scowling, he retrieves them from the floor, drops them in the bowl, and strides to his office, grateful that his mother has taken Alexis to a theater and poetry festival in Boston for the weekend and won't be back for 48 hours.

He takes a bottle of his most expensive and therefore best-for-drowning-his-sorrows single malt from his cabinet, and pours a hefty amount into a glass. After saying goodbye–and it had been goodbye, not see you next time you're in town–to Jacinda he'd almost stopped in an airport bar for a drink, but changed his mind. He'd already known that he might drink a lot tonight, and he wasn't about to jeopardize his car, his license, or himself by driving under the influence. He did risk getting a point on license by speeding on the way home, but at least he'd been sober. The traffic had been peculiarly light and he'd been able to exceed the limit far too easily. Fortunately no cop had clocked it.

No cop. Not a single cop. Not any cop. He stretches his legs out, puts his feet on his desk, and has his first taste of the Macallan. It's perfection. Unlike anything else.

Not any cop. She's not just any cop. Hell, no. She's unlike anything else, too. There's no cop like her. Not a bit. Not anywhere. Not on any force. Not any woman, either. He's never known a woman like her. He takes far too deep a swallow of Macallan, which is something that should be savored slowly and reverently, but he wants to immerse himself in it, as if that would wash her away.

Cops aren't supposed to lie. Well, except to perps. They can always do that, get them to show their hands. He wishes she'd been lying to that little snot in interrogation, but he knows her too well to know that she wasn't. She'd told that boy the truth, that she remembered everything about her shooting, but she'd lied to him, her partner. The man who'd told her that he loved her. Fucking hell. He'd left the precinct, gone home, thrown a few things in a bag, and bought a seat on the next plane to Vegas. He'd tried forgetting Beckett at roulette; had tried banishing her from his mind in a heart-stoppingly high-stakes game of poker in which he'd won more than a hundred grand without half trying, and hadn't cared; had tried to erase any trace of her as he'd hypnotized himself at the slot machines. None of it had worked. And then, genius that he is, he'd picked up Jacinda on the flight home. It had almost been worth it.

No, it hadn't. He'd lied, too, when he'd told Beckett that Jacinda was fun. Well, maybe a little fun, but not long-lasting fun. And fun isn't what he needs, either, but his lie is nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to hers. His is a Little League level lie; Beckett's is a Major League, Hall of Fame lie.

He raises the glass to his lips again, but there's nothing there. Huh, he finished the drink already? Fine, he'll have another. It will give him the courage to take the next step in his newly formulated campaign to erase Kate Beckett from his life. What should he do first, since nothing has worked so far? Ah, here's a 92-proof idea. He yanks his phone from his pocket and clicks on his photographs. He goes back to March 10, 2009; it was the day after they'd met, and the first time he'd snapped a picture of her, though she hadn't been aware of it. Wow, such short hair. Boyish. Almost no make-up. But God, so beautiful. She was looking sideways, that little mole under one eye clearly visible; she'd thought he was playing a game on his phone. He was, come to think of it. Hunting big game, and she was it. Not any more. He hits delete. He keeps on hitting delete for the next quarter of an hour, stopping only because his glass is empty again. Time for a refill.

He returns to the photos, which have taken on a slightly blurry quality, maybe as a result of the booze he's throwing back. He should have something to eat, but he has no stomach for food. No stomach for Beckett, who he used to think was better than any food he'd ever had. God, he doesn't want to get rid of this photo. It was from five months ago, after she'd rescued him and his mother from the New Amsterdam Bank and Trust and come to dinner at the loft. He'd wished that he'd been able to photograph her when she'd found him in the vault. Her expression–he'd been sure that it was one of love when she'd cut the ties that had bound his hands together. That picture, the unrecorded one, is seared into his mind, and it's going to take a lot more than Scotch to dissolve it. Shit. He shakes his head and his finger hovers over DELETE as he focuses on the image on his phone. She'd been on the sofa in the loft after the enormous, celebratory dinner they'd had. They'd joked about who had saved the other's life more times. As with almost every picture here, she'd had no idea that he'd taken it. Her eyes were soft, even softer than the loose, gray blouse that she'd been wearing. Her hair was down and uncombed, a tangle of curls framing that magnificent face. No. This is too painful. He presses delete and tries to pretend that he has no regrets. He looks at his watch. It's late. Everything is late. Too late.

He pushes himself up from his chair and turns out the light. A few minutes later, he's brushed his teeth, stripped down to his underwear, and put his phone in the charger. But as soon as he gets in bed and pulls the covers up to his chin he hears the chirp of an incoming text. At midnight? He rolls onto his side and looks at the screen. Beckett? Seriously? He's not reading it. He hits delete a lot faster than he had when he'd been purging the photos, and puts the phone back. Almost immediately it rings and her face appears, so vivid it's as if she's in the room with him. As if. He hits the decline button and turns off the phone. Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit, goddammit.

Beckett stamps her bare foot on the bare floor of her bedroom. How dare he do that? How dare he refuse to take her call? Is he in bed with Jacinda? No, can't be. He wouldn't have been able to get to the phone that quickly. You know what? She should just get dressed, go to the loft and have it out with him. If he's going to disappear from her life, she wants to tell him good riddance first.

Except, goddammit, she doesn't want him to disappear. She'll go over there tomorrow, in the cold light of a warm spring day, and say goodbye.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.

She'd known how self-destructive it was to open another bottle of wine even before she'd yanked the cork from the neck, but she'd gone ahead anyway. She'd known it as she poured a glass, and then another, and part of another, and apparently that's when she'd fallen asleep. She's awake now, painfully awake, and in the bathroom. She won't look in the mirror because the woman looking back at her will be someone from a sideshow, with a head three times bigger than normal, a tongue as thick and rough as an unsanded two-by-four, and eyes with whites the color of the Cabernet that she'd had in excessive amounts.

Creeping out to the kitchen, she silently curses Castle. This has to be one of the worst hangovers ever, certainly the worst since he gatecrashed her life, and it's his fault. As soon as she's caffeinated and has taken a shower she's going straight to his loft and give him hell. Sonofabitch, her head hurts. How is it that she never noticed how noisy her coffeemaker is?

"Oh, God." Two syllables stretch into five, a verbal fog horn that follows a groan from Richard Castle's fleece-lined mouth. He gets out of bed only because he has to, and winces as he turns on the bathroom light. He has half a mind–and half a mind is throbbing enough for several heads–to call Beckett and tell her off. She'd driven him to drink last night, and now he has a mother of a hangover. He needs a shower, but the thought of water beating down on his scalp is too painful to contemplate, so he decides to take a bath. While his tub fills mercifully quickly he strips off the underwear that he'd worn to bed, drops it in the hamper, and tries to purge her from his mind.

He steps into the water and slides down. Ahhhhhhhh. The Jacuzzi jets are almost as good as a massage, and his head is safely above water. He stays in far longer than he'd intended, but he has nothing to do today, and no one to see. When his skin is just short of permanent wrinkling, he hoists himself out of the tub and wraps himself in a thick terrycloth robe that he'd draped over the heated towel bar. Sometimes he really loves being rich.

A few minutes later he's leaning against the kitchen island, sipping a perfect, double-strength coffee, trying not to think at all, but voluntarily to enter something of a temporary vegetative state. And just as he's almost succeeded a hideous metallic sound, like gears stripping on an 18-wheeler, splits open his brain. He identifies it as the doorbell and has barely recovered when a different noise assaults him. He puts down his mug, and as he turns towards the door he can almost feel it judder, even though it weighs close to 400 pounds. Someone is pounding on it with at least two fists. Godzilla, maybe. Godzilla and a friend.

In no mood for this, he pulls hard on the knob; the door swings silently open and the pounder on the other side topples wildly over the threshold, knocking him to the floor.

"Beckett?"

She lands flat on top of him, and they're almost nose to nose. Why does he have to be wearing a blue bathrobe that's a perfect match for his eyes? Why can't it be some ratty, dingy, unwashed gray thing? And why does he have to be wearing aftershave that makes her want to stay right where she is and burrow into his chest, a deep, soft, tantalizing vee of which is only inches away from her mouth? "Way to let someone in, Castle," she says, bristling as she struggles to push herself off him and stand up.

"I didn't exactly invite you over," he responds from the floor. Why does she have to look so beautiful when she's indignant? Because she's definitely indignant, and he has no clue why. He, on the other hand, has several excellent reasons to be indignant. Pissed off. Hurt. Angry. Betrayed.

"Yeah, well if you'd had the decency to answer my call last night, I wouldn't have had to."

"Had to what?"

"Come over here. Or wait for an invitation on your monogrammed stationery." She glares. "Are you going to lie there all day or do you expect me to haul you to your feet?"

He blinks. "What makes you think I have monogrammed stationery?"

"Oh, please. Of course you do. The paper is probably made from unborn trees or something."

"Unborn trees?" If he weren't so mad, he'd laugh. "High-end stationery is made from linen pulp, Beckett."

"Fine, linen pulp. And I'm sure your linen pulp is engraved with R-E-A-R-C."

"Whoa, you know my initials? How the hell do you know that?"

She holds up her index finger. "One, I'm a detective." And another finger. "Two, a very good detective." And another. "Three, you told me."

"I don't believe you. When would I have?"

"At your Hallowe'en party, two years ago. When you were sashaying around in that Edgar Allen Poe costume."

"I never sashay."

She glares again. How did this conversation get so off point? Oh. She holds up two fingers, mentally this time. One, it wasn't a conversation–not yet anyway. And two, he's so damn distracting with his hair sticking up adorably. Yes, adorably.

"I repeat, oh, please." Tilting her head slightly upwards, she inhales. "I smell coffee. Don't bother to ask if I'd like a cup, I'll get it myself." And with that she flounces–she'd admit it, if he accused her–to the cabinet where she knows the mugs are, and pulls out the nearest one. She's about to fill it when she notices that it's emblazoned WORLD'S BEST DAD, and immediately trades it for a plain one. Oh, hell. Alexis must be here. It's Saturday, and she's probably asleep, but she can't be yelling at Castle if his kid's upstairs and could come down at any moment. Still, she's here, and she's going to say her piece before her nerve abandons her. She has an idea: they'll talk somewhere else. When she looks back, mug in hand, she sees him standing. At least he's not still lying on the floor. "Could we go to your office, please?"

"My office? Why?"

A look of mild confusion has replaced, at least for the moment, the one of anger.

Already on the move, she explains over her shoulder, "Because I don't want your daughter to hear what I have to say." Her stride is as long as possible; she's intent on getting to his office before he can stop her. By the time he catches up, her right foot is already in the room and the left is about to follow. Should she stand up or sit? If he's upright, she should be, too. On the other hand, she's in sneakers, not boots, so he has the height advantage and she doesn't want that. She drops onto the love seat, noting the irony, and puts her mug on the end table at her elbow.

"Make yourself at home," he mutters, deliberately loud enough for her to hear. He looks hard at her and finally takes a seat–not next to her but in a chair at right angles to her. Almost immediately he regrets it. Her profile is one of things he most lo–likes, liked–about her. One of his favorite photos caught her in an unstudied pose almost exactly like this, but he'd destroyed it last night. No getting it back now. Still, it's better to see her in profile than to have to look into her eyes. "Why are you here, Beckett?"

She takes a few moments, not only to work out what she's going to say–which she was crazy not to have done on the way over–but also to imprint this room in her memory. There's the manual typewriter, given a place of honor on a shelf. It's an ordinary machine that must have a provenance that's important to Castle, but she's never asked, so she'll never find out. There's the enormous, mesmerizing photograph of a French staircase on the wall behind his desk. The hundreds and hundreds books–novels, histories, biographies, travelogues, poetry–set on a slant in glass cubes that are installed on an angle. Everything. Absolutely everything. She had spent some time in here two years ago, when she stayed in the loft for a couple of weeks after her apartment was destroyed. She'd loved it then, she loves it now. But this morning there's the thrust of a knife in her ribs, the point about to pierce her heart, because she knows that she'll never see it again. She sets her jaw. He wants her out of his life, fine. His choice. But she wants to know why. And then she'll say to hell with you, Castle, and go and not look back. He's well seated? Good. Now she'll stand, unleash all her power and powers.

"Why am I here?" she asks, while she's rising to her full height, just three inches shy of six feet. "Because you walked out, Castle."

"I didn't walk out."

"Sure felt like it. You walked out on me, your partner. The last couple of weeks, every time I've tried to talk to you? You've literally left. I feel like you're freezing me out and I have no idea why. And this last case? You showed evidence to an outsider. Totally inappropriate."

"You made that perfectly clear. I said then what I'll say now: Jacinda wanted to help and she did. Got it?"

"I got it. But now I'll say what I said then. You don't get it. You just don't."

He's as furious again as he was last night. He wonders if she knows how red her cheeks are. She was paler than weak tea when she came in–fell in–here, but not any more. "You know what I get Beckett? First, I get that you chose to stand up so you could intimidate me as if I were some perp in interrogation. So I'm going to stand up, too. Level the playing field." He rises from the chair. "More than level. I have five inches on you." She's going to have to crane her neck a little if she wants to make real eye contact. "Second, I get what this is really all about. Jealousy. You're jealous that I'm having fun. You're jealous of Jacinda."

"Jealous? Are you kidding? If there's any jealousy in the room it's yours. You're jealous of Colin Hunt."

"Why would I be jealous of that limey blowhard? And speaking of inappropriate, you don't think it was inappropriate for Mister Scotland Yard to drop trou in front of you?"

"It was a towel, not his pants."

"So that makes it all right?"

"Again, Castle, not the point." He's making it incredibly hard for her to hold herself together because, yes, she is jealous of the uncomplicated flight attendant. But what matters most to her is that he pulled away from her just as she was certain that they were moving very close to each other. Very. As in total. Partners in life, not just in the confines of the Twelfth. She shakes her head. "Why is it so important for you to have fun, anyway? You're not ten years old."

Those words are still coming out of her mouth when a vivid memory of Roy Montgomery looms up. Last May, in his office, the night before he was murdered. She and Castle had had a terrible fight and she'd told the Cap that she wanted him out. _"Kate, you're the best that I've ever trained, maybe the best I've ever seen,"_ Montgomery had told her. _"But you weren't having any fun before he came along."_ She shakes her head again, as if to dispel both the image and the observation.

"Everyone needs to have fun. But I doubt that you came over to debate the merits of fun."

She sighs. "You're right. I didn't. But you still haven't told me why you walked out." Aware that he's about to object, she raises her hands in surrender. "Oh, excuse me, you didn't walk out. But you sure as hell put a lot of emotional distance between us and I don't know why. And I still don't know why you took off for Vegas, either."

"I don't owe you an explanation for everything I do in my personal life. And that's rich coming from you, who never shares anything. You play your cards so close to your chest they're hidden underneath your clothes." Unbidden, unwanted, a mental picture floats across his imagined field of vision: it's of her, naked, a few cards scattered across her upper body, the queen of hearts titled against the soft curve of her breast.

"Do you remember when you came to my apartment last May? Told me we never talk about what we are? Who we are?"

"I'm not an idiot, Beckett. Of course I remember."

"I've been trying to talk to you for weeks. Who we are, what we are. I thought we were so close to a we, to an us, but all you've been doing lately is pushing me away. Sent me out to sea on a sheet of ice. If you, if you–" She doesn't know where to go now, he's knocked her off her game, and she looks down at the floor. "If you want out of the precinct, fine, but at least tell me why. After four years, don't you think I deserve that?"

"Why? Okay. Because I'm sick of wasting my life on someone who lies to me."

TBC

 **A/N** Thank you for all the lovely reviews, follows, and favorites. Work has eased up a bit so I have more time to write: the next chapter will follow much more quickly than this one did. Have a wonderful weekend.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.

She reacts as if he had slapped her sharply across the face, because that's how it feels. She blinks, and recoils. If she were a slapper, she'd have smacked him as hard as she could on his smooth, newly-shaved cheek. But she's not. What he said? That's a kick to the gut, and she's aware that she has unconsciously doubled over. When she finally uncurls her body she looks straight into his eyes, but can't sort out all the warring emotions there.

"You think I lie to you?" she asks dully.

"I know you do." There's acid in his voice, not dullness.

She doesn't know what he's talking about, and the fight is out of her. She's exhausted and struggling to stay on her feet. "About what?"

"Oh, come on," he snaps. "You know exactly what."

"I don't, Castle."

"So now you're lying about lying."

That lit a little fire in her. "Want to give me a polygraph? I wouldn't be surprised if you have one here. For your research." Does that sound mean? Maybe it is, but his "wasting his life" on her was cruel. She's so ragged now she doesn't know, and she wants an end to this battle.

"Well, let me remind you, Beckett. I don't need a machine for this. Ten and a half months ago, during your eulogy for Roy Montgomery, I saw sunlight glint off the stock of a barrel. Some bastard was crouched behind a gravestone, and aiming a rifle at you. I tried to save you by tackling you, but I wasn't quick enough. Unlike Superman I'm not faster than a speeding bullet."

He'd seen the gun barrel? She'd often wondered how he'd known to knock her down when he did, but she'd never asked. Couldn't ask. She has an almost irrepressible urge to put her hand over the scar, but doesn't, even with his eyes boring into her.

"When I came to visit you in the hospital the next day, brought you flowers, you said you didn't remember anything after being on the podium. And then you told me, 'They say that there's some things that are better not being remembered.' You recall that, Beckett? I was sitting by your bed in the chair that Josh had just been in. You were propped up on pillows."

He stops. She can see his chest heaving as if he'd just run a four-minute mile.

"Yes. Yes, I recall that."

"Oh, so we have some progress here. But that's not the part that interests me. It's not the heart of the story. No, the heart of the story is something that happened much more recently." He shifts slightly, planting his feet farther apart, as if to steady himself. "The bombing case. You were in the box with that backpack kid, Bobby. I was watching you from the other side of the glass, watching you take him apart. Admiring you for it. You were like a jungle cat, stalking prey. When he claimed that everything was a big blank because of the trauma, you pounced. 'You don't get to use that excuse,' you said. 'Do you want to know trauma? I was shot in the chest and I remember every second of it.' You know that felt like, Detective? It felt as though I'd been shot in the chest. Taken one directly to the heart. And that's when I did walk out, for a while."

Does he know that he just rubbed his hand over his heart? He's a man of grand gestures, and also of intimate ones, but she's almost sure that he made this one without realizing it. Her own heart contracts, and she can't make a sound.

He clears his throat. "So, if you remembered every second of it, as you told someone you don't even know, for Christ's sake, you certainly remembers the seconds, the minutes–I don't know how long it was–when I was holding you in the cemetery. You may not know that your blood was on my hands, literally on my hands, but you sure as hell know what I said to you. Isn't that right? If you remembered everything, as you said to Bobby Backpack, then you remember that."

"Yes. All right?" She hears her voice rise. "Yes. I remember it. I told my therapist. He's the only one. I told him what you said."

"Your therapist? You have a therapist?"

She barely hears the astonished question because she's rushing past him, through the office to his bathroom, where she manages to shut the door just before she throws up. She rinses her mouth a couple of times and dries her hands on what must be the softest towel ever made. She luxuriated in ones just like it during her stay in the loft two years ago. Oh, hell. It's a good thing that she left home without makeup because now she's crying. She blows her nose, splashes water on her face, and uses the towel again. It's time to go back out and put a stop to this horror.

Apparently he hasn't moved. He's standing exactly as he had been when she'd fled the room, and he looks shocked. "A therapist?"

"Yes, a therapist. I'd have fallen apart months ago if it weren't for him."

"I can't believe you're going to a therapist."

"That's what you're fixated on? Yes. I went the first time in September. Department regs. Told him I didn't remember the shooting. That was it. But then I went back, of my own free will. He asked what was on my mind and I couldn't even begin. Not a word. That's how screwed-up I was. So he asked if anything about that day had come back to me, and I told him that I'd lied before. That I remembered everything. So see, Castle, you're not the only one."

He makes a few abortive attempts to say something before he finally blurts out, "But I'm different."

"Why?"

"Because I told you I loved you."

That's it. The whole thing. That he said he loved her. She feels–she doesn't know what she feels, or should feel. She feels numb, and yet she also feels is if every nerve in her body has been sliced open. "You never told me again."

"What?"

"You never said it again."

"Why would I?"

"Why would you? Because you said it to me when I was dying, Castle. How could I know that you meant it? People are always saying things in the heat of the moment that they don't mean."

"You told me you needed time."

"We had this discussion in September, remember? I tried to explain then, to apologize, and I thought we'd gotten past that. Obviously I didn't do a good job."

"But you lied, Beckett. You've had all this time to tell me, and you didn't."

"You know what? You're right. I'm sorry. You're right. But you know what else? You've had all this time to tell me again, if you loved me. Why didn't you tell me again over the summer, if you meant it?"

"Because!" He's shouting. "Because you told me to give you time, goddammit."

"When did that ever stop you before? Since day one you've done things I've asked you not to do, or told you not to. And if you loved me so much, if you really loved me, why didn't you come see me and tell me? I was alone in that cabin for months, and it was every kind of misery."

He's breathing hard again, and the muscle on one side of his jaw is twitching. "I hadn't a clue where you were."

"That's what stopped you? I don't believe it. You never let anything go, Castle. It's the best and the worst of you. You dig into everything. Like my mother's case. How did you find out things about it that you had no business finding out, back then, when you consulted with the forensics expert? I was so furious that I went to the evidence room afterwards to see if you'd checked out my mother's files. Your name wasn't in the log, but I know damn well you must have gotten it somehow."

This time it's her turn to stop. She has to get out of here, but not before saying her piece. She opens and closes and opens her fists, and swallows the bile that's rising in her throat. "I've been trying to put myself back together for months, piece by jagged piece. For you. For us. I thought for us. And on my worst days–or nights, because nights are worse–I wonder why I'm bothering. Because whoever tried to kill me last May is still out there, with his finger on the trigger. And the next time he'll get it right. I don't know when it will be, but it will be. I'm not a cat with nine lives. I got a second one, but it's a wreck. I'm sorry that you wasted your life on me."

He still hasn't said anything. He hasn't said, wait, Kate, I do love you. I meant it, I love you. Stay here, I love you. What she's hurt is his pride. That's all. She turns and walks as fast as she can to the door, opens it, races down the stairs, and out into the street. It's raining, and she walks four blocks before she sees an empty cab. He hasn't come after her. He doesn't love her. He just had a bruised ego. What an idiot she is.

As soon as she's home she changes into a pair of leggings, a tee shirt, and a dry pair of Nikes. And then she goes back out and starts to run. She doesn't care where, doesn't know where. She just runs and runs and runs.

For a long time after she leaves he stays in the same spot, as if his feet have put down roots through the floorboards. He plays and replays what had gone on in the last half hour. Rewinds, stops, fast forwards, rewinds. Over and over. And then, his mind working very quickly, he thinks about what brought them to this point. The last four years. They're both in the wrong, they're both in the right. He calls her phone at least a dozen times; she doesn't pick up and he doesn't leave a voicemail. Finally he pulls on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, shoves his feet into a pair of sneakers, and goes downstairs to his garage.

He starts the Ferrari, stops, and gets out. Not the Ferrari. The Ferrari is what he was driving with Jacinda, and he's not making that mistake again. He settles into his Mercedes and heads to her building. There's no parking space in front of it, but there's one opposite, and he pulls in.

Oh, for a doorman who could tell him if Beckett were there. He stands in the outer lobby and rings her bell. No response. Is she not home, or not answering? It's a dismal Saturday morning; surely some neighbor will come along soon. He waits almost half an hour before it happens, and he has a story ready. "Thank goodness," he says heartily to an elderly woman who is on her way out, carrying an umbrella and a large tote bag. "I'm new here and my wife has the only key to the lobby." He gives her his best smile and holds the door for her.

Two flights up, he rings the bell. No response. He knocks. Ditto. If she's home, she'll have to come out eventually. If she's not? Well, she'll have to come home eventually. Eventually is about 90 minutes later; he hears the squishy squeak of running shoes on the uncarpeted corridor floor, and scramble up from the doormat where he'd been sitting.

She's drenched. She looks awful. She looks sad. She looks physically and emotionally spent. She looks befuddled. "Castle?"

"Stay with me, Kate. Don't leave me, please." He reaches out and takes her hand. "Stay with me, okay? Kate, I love you. I love you, Kate."

She looks beautiful.

 **A/N** Some readers think the fault is all with Beckett, others think it's all Castle's. I think, as with so many things, that the truth is in the middle, and that's where they should meet.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.

It has taken her a long time and a lot of therapy to reconstruct what happened in the cemetery, but she knows, every part of her knows, that what Castle just said to her is exactly what he told her right before she lost consciousness, the blood apparently spilling out of her and onto him. That had shocked her; no one had ever told her until he'd mentioned it a few hours ago. She looks down at his hands, as if they might still be stained with it.

"I didn't know about it, Castle," she whispers.

"About what?"

"The blood. That my blood was on your hands, after I got shot. I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"Just now, I flashed back on that day last year, when Raglan got shot. Remember? In the diner?"

"Never gonna forget that."

"You looked so shattered, when you were wiping Raglan's blood off your hands. I remember saying to you that it's different when it happens right in front of you. And now I know that you didn't just see me get shot, and didn't just see my blood, you felt it. You wore it. That must have been so–."She can't choose a word out, or even get any word out.

"Awful. Terrifying. Heart-stopping. One of the worst moments of my life."

She squeezes his fingers, which are still wrapped around hers. "Let's go inside." With her free hand she digs her key out of her wet jacket pocket and unlocks the door. "I'm freezing. I have to get these clothes off," she says, stealing a look at him. The old Castle, Castle of even a month ago, would have been unable to let that pass. _I can help you with that, Beckett_. Or, _Let me warm you up_. Or, _We could shower together. Saves water_. Or, _I've been told that I'm very hot_. But today's Castle, the one standing in her kitchen, gently wide-eyed, is silent. He moves his feet as if he's both emotionally and physically uncomfortable.

"Um, maybe while you get changed I can, you know, go get us some coffee."

"I have coffee here, Castle."

"Right, of course. But. I don't mean to presume, but I'm seriously hung over and have the feeling that you might be, too, and I thought I could run over to the deli across the street and get us some scrambled egg sandwiches." His eyes dart around the kitchen. "I'm not sure if you have any. Bread. You know, or eggs."

"I guess you know me pretty well," she says, something blooming in her chest. Something a lot like hope, and a few other things. "Thanks. My, uh, keys." She scratches the elbow of her soggy hoody. "If you want to take my keys you could let yourself back in. In case I'm still in the shower. Or something."

"Okay, thanks." He shuffles his feet again. "I'll go then."

"Okay." Without intending to, she waves, as if she were seeing him off on a trip that's a lot longer and more significant than a 50-yard trot to the deli, except that she can't think of anything that could be more significant than him going out to get them breakfast and bringing it back here.

He's about to open the door when he stops, drops his head, and then raises it again. He mumbles a few words, but she can't make them out, so she takes a few steps towards him. "I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you."

He clears his throat, but doesn't turn her way. "I used to dream about it. Off and on all summer."

"About what?"

"The blood." He waits a few moments and then adds, "I kept the shirt."

"The shirt?"

"The one I was wearing. Your blood was all over the cuffs and some of it got on the front. There was even some on a button. A button."

"You should throw it away," she says to his back. "You don't need to be reminded of that. What happened."

He pivots slowly until he's facing her. "I folded it up and put it in a box. In my closet. But that doesn't remind me of it. I'm reminded of it every time I see you press your hand to your chest. Did you know that you do that? Sometimes it's when we're at a crime scene, or if you're at the murder board, looking at the photo of a gunshot victim."

She's horrified. "I do that?"

"You're doing it now. It must be the point of impact."

She looks down and snatches her hand away as if it had landed on a boiling tea kettle. "God," she says, "I am so screwed up. I–. I thought I was much better. Stronger."

"I'm sure you are," he says awkwardly. "Listen, I don't want you to catch cold. I'll go get our food." And with that he moves as quickly as she's ever seen him, and leaves, clutching her keys.

In the bathroom she turns on the water full force, and as hot as she can bear it. It's only when she realizes that she's shampooed her hair four times that she gets out of the shower and dries off. He must be out there. He must think she's crazy still to be in here. Maybe she is crazy, still touching her scar without being aware of it. She wipes off the mirror with a towel and looks at the spot, not quite a perfect circle, between her breasts; it's not quite the size of a quarter, and the skin is still shiny and slightly raised. She can't put it a box, as Castle had with his shirt, but she'd thought that it was, if not behind her, at least fading. Mentally, not just physically. That it didn't fill her mind every day, or all day, as it had over the summer and much of the fall, before Burke had given her ways to cope. But maybe she isn't coping. Maybe she just shoved it down into some metaphorical box and pretended it wasn't there.

A noise reaches her from another part of the apartment. A chair? It sounds like a chair being pulled across the floor. Obviously Castle is here. She uses the hair dryer for a few minutes, just long enough to make herself semi-presentable, and pulls on a pair of leggings, some socks, and a long sleeved jersey.

When she steps into the living room she understands why she thought that she'd heard a chair. Castle has moved a small table out from against the wall and drawn two chairs up to it. A makeshift tablecloth–in fact a striped dishtowel–peeks out from beneath two mismatched mugs and two white plates, flanked by napkins, forks, knives, and spoons. A basket holds a pair of bulky packages wrapped in aluminum foil.

"This is really nice, Castle. Thank you."

"I wanted to–. I wanted it to be civilized. Or as civilized as two scrambled egg sandwiches on rye toast can be. They should still be warm. In the foil."

"Thanks for transferring the coffee to the mugs. Much nicer than paper."

"Or Styrofoam."

"Oh, God, yes." Even though she's at home, she feels slightly out of place. "Shall we sit?" she asks, needlessly pointing to the chairs.

"Yes. Please do, sit. Please sit. Hey, are those my socks?"

"Your socks?" Holy shit, yes, they're his socks.

"My socks." He bends over and looks under the table at her feet. "Definitely mine. Loved that canary yellow."

"Must have forgotten to return them. You lent them to me when all my own socks burned up. I never had cashmere socks before."

"You should keep them."

"Sort of did. Especially after I washed them in hot water and they shrank. The truth is I was too embarrassed to give them back. And they fit me now."

"Fit you like a glove. _Handschuhe_."

"What's that?"

" _Handschuhe_? German for gloves. Almost the only word I know in German, and it's genius. It means hand shoes."

"How do you even know that?"

"Because when I wrote my first best seller I used the first royalty check to go to Vienna. I'd discovered Graham Greene and I was obsessed with the movie _The Third Man_ , so I flew to Vienna for three days. When I was there I saw the most gorgeous gloves ever made and I bought them. Paid twice as much as I had for a winter coat at Macy's the year before, and they were worth it. The salesman spoke perfect English, so I asked him how to say gloves in German. _Handschuhe_ , he said. Hand shoes. I love it."

"Mmmm." She takes a sandwich from the basket and starts to peel back the rattling foil.

"Speaking of the truth," he says.

The last word vaporizes her appetite. She almost chokes on the smell of eggs, and closes her eyes. She might even be swaying. Civilized. He wants whatever this is to be civilized.

"Kate? Beckett?"

She runs her tongue over her lower lip.

"Kate? The truth is I love you. All right? I love you. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you again."

She opens her eyes, and straightens her spine. "And I'm sorry that I didn't tell you that I remembered. It's just that–. Could I tell you a little bit about the summer? After you said it the first time?"

He's always wanted to know about that summer, the Lost Summer in every way. "Please." He's hungry for whatever she says, but not for the eggs.

"You know last September, when I came back? I told you that I'd broken up with Josh. What I didn't tell you was that it was while I was still in the hospital. The day after the surgery. I was desperate to get out of there and I finally did, after a week. I went to my dad's cabin."

"So your father stayed with you?"

"For the first ten days, and then I forced him to go. Said I could do everything on my own, which I couldn't. At first I used to almost black out from the pain, several times a day, but then it began to get better. And then when it got a little better and it wasn't the only thing I could think about, things went downhill."

"What do you mean?"

"When I wasn't using all my energy to fight the pain, and using all my willpower not to give in to it, then my mind began to go elsewhere, and that was much worse."

"Why? Where did your mind go?"

"To the guy who shot me–the mystery man who tried to kill me. Obviously hired by the same guy who hired Dick Coonan to kill my mother. Every time I heard the neighbor's dog bark, a quarter of a mile way, every time I saw a shadow on a wall or heard tires on the road, I thought it was him coming back to finish the job. To finish me off. To shut me up. I came back to the city early and hid in my apartment because I felt safer in the city. It sounds stupid, doesn't it? He shot me in the city. But that's how I felt. But the truth is, the truth is, he knows where I live and where I work. He could follow me to the subway and push me onto the tracks right when an express train is barreling through. He could stab me when I'm coming home alone, late at night, the way Coonan did my mother."

"You can't think like that. It doesn't do any good. Worse, it eats you up." Besides, he thinks, I'm keeping you safe. Don't worry.

She doesn't know what makes her take the leap. She's taking a leap forward, but she's taking an even bigger leap back. It makes her heart sing and her heart break. Maybe it's the way he looked when he said, 'Of course it would have made a difference.' Maybe it's because he bought them egg sandwiches. Maybe it's because twice in the last hour he's told her that he loves her, and the last time he'd said it was eleven months ago when she was almost dead. Maybe it's because she's ready to tell him back. Maybe it will make all the difference, when she tells him. But the difference will be good and bad.

"Here's the truth," she says, her hand inching across the table until her thumb brushes against his knuckles. "I love you, Castle. I want you to know that. And you love me. But everything's changed. Just like that, everything, but in conflicting ways. Now that I know that my blood was on your hands, everything has changed. I'm so afraid that I won't stay with you this time. You said, 'Stay with me, Kate.' You said, 'Don't leave me,' and I'm terrified that I will."

He can't take all this in. He's in quicksand and he has to get out before it swallows him. "I don't, I don't understand. You love me but you're afraid you'll leave me? Why? This is it for me, Kate. You're it for me. You love me but not enough to stay? Is that it?"

"No, you don't understand. If I stay with you–and you can't begin to know how much I want to stay with you–you're going to lose me. I love you. I love you beyond all imagining. But the dark side of the thrilling, blindingly light side of that truth is that there's a man out there who is going to kill me and then you'll be left alone. I don't want that to happen to you."

"It's not going to happen."

"It may not happen tomorrow, or next month, or next year. But what if it happens three years from now? What if we're together and have a baby? Because the guy who's running this show is so sick that he'd probably take pleasure in leaving my child, my mother's grandchild, without a mother. And you'd have to live with it. That's the truth."

Now he feels as if he's fallen into a Dickensian dreamscape: it's the best of times, the worst of times. In the space of minutes, he's been elated and destroyed. She knows he loves her, she loves him, but she can't be with him because she believes she'll be killed, and he'll be left alone the way she and her father had been. But she won't, and he won't. He has the power to keep her safe, and that's the truth. He's already kept her safe for almost a year. It's just that he hasn't told her. If she's going to stay with him, he has to tell her. And he's afraid to do it.

TBC

 **A/N** Thanks to so many of you who weighed in on the last chapter. There were a lot of anonymous reviewers and I bow to you here since I can't do it any other way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.

 **A/N** I was stunned to realize that I posted the first chapter of my first fan fiction story on January 28, 2014, exactly five years ago today. 958,768 words later I'm still here. Thank you to everyone who has hung in with me.

"Were you always afraid of being shot? Or just since it happened?" He shreds a corner of his unused paper napkin. "Maybe I mean worried, because you've always seemed to have this limitless reservoir of bravery. Were you worried?" There's no judgment in the question. He just needs to know, has to know.

"Of being killed? Every cop knows it could happen. I wasn't afraid before, but aware–it goes with the badge." She shrugs. "I didn't think about it much. But after I got shot, the game changed. I was terrified, all the time, even though I tried to tamp it down. Part of the PTSD. Doctor Burke has helped me deal with it. I was managing pretty well until–."

Her voice trails off. When she turns her head and stares out the rain-streaked window, he has to stop himself from lunging across the table and pulling her to the floor in case a contract killer is on the roof across the street, or the street beyond that, the scope on his rifle aimed at a spot between her eyes. It's agony, but he has to press her. "You were managing pretty well until?"

Slowly she turns back to him. "Until now. Today. When I understood how much you love me, when I realized what my shooting did to you, everything changed. That's a whole other kind of terror and it's not one I can live with. To leave you alone, my blood all over you. That's blood that can never be washed away."

He envisions her blood on his hands again, and suppresses a shudder. He can stop this from happening. He has stopped it from happening. If the only way to persuade her to take a chance on him–she says she wants to stay with him beyond all imagining, those were her words, 'beyond all imagining,' and he has a hell of an imagination–is to tell her what he has done and is doing, he will. But he needs to do something else first, something important. Something that he may have only one chance to do, right here, over a funny little table and lukewarm coffee uneaten sandwiches. He looks at her and somehow gets her to look at him. He doesn't know how, but he's grateful.

"You look so young, Kate. I've never seen you without makeup." Except in the hospital, which he sure as hell isn't mentioning. "You're so beautiful. You're beautiful with it, too, but beauty left alone, all its own, is amazing." He sees her flush a little. "Don't be embarrassed. It's true." Don't look away, don't look away, don't look away. Thank God, she doesn't. "I have to ask you something. Don't you think it's crazy that I've told you that I love you and you've told me that you love me, and yet here we sit in two straight-backed chairs on opposite sides of a table, never having kissed each other? Not counting the kiss last year outside the warehouse, since it was staged." Staged, yeah, but there was nothing remotely stage-like about it. "I want to kiss you. Really, really want to kiss you. Okay?"/

"Okay." She nods. "Yes."

She watches him get up, slowly, and before he can get to her side of the table she's out of her chair and in his arms, holding onto him as if he were a life raft in the middle of the ocean. That is what he is, her life raft, except now she has to swim to shore by herself. If she can just hold on for a little bit, spend a little time with him here, she can keep that forever. Take it and put it in the little wooden box that's on top of the desk in her bedroom. The box that has a pressed orange rose from the bouquet he brought her in the hospital last May. A bag of gummy bears that she won from him in poker. A fortune cookie fortune that he'd never seen: they'd had takeout with the boys in the break room one night and Castle had been sitting opposite her. The scrap of paper says, in red ink, TRUE LOVE IS LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU; she'd tucked it into her pocket while he'd been arguing with Espo about who deserved the last dumpling. And then there's the only photo she has of him: she'd secretly taken it when a paramedic was bandaging his hand after he'd punched out Lockwood, the night of their not real-real-surreal kiss. She'd taken her phone to a professional photo store and had a five-by-seven print made of it. And after he leaves today, she will wash the canary yellow cashmere socks and when they're dry fold them up and put them in the the box. Everything she will have of him from now on will be only a memory, folded up to keep her warm.

Her face is pressed into his neck and her arms are wrapped so tight around his back that he thinks her reservoir of bravery has nothing on her reservoir of physical strength. He moves his hand to the side of her jaw and gently pulls it towards him. Her eyes are closed as he begins to kiss her; he wants to keep his open but he can't. Only two of his senses are working: touch (her skin is indescribably soft) and smell (a combination of soap and coffee and pear-and-freesia body lotion) and no, here's a third. He kisses her very gently at first, then a little harder, and she responds by opening her mouth to his and now his sense of taste overwhelms everything else. If this is the only kiss they will ever share, it will have to be enough, will be enough. And when he thinks he can't possibly go any longer without breathing she moans, a tiny, erotic moan that brings his entire body to life. He feels it before he hears it, a vibration against his tongue and lips and rib cage, before the sound reaches his ears. And then he feels light pressure against his chest: it's the flat of her hand, pushing him back.

"Castle," she says, her voice, half an octave lower than usual, catching on something. "You have to go now."

"Go?"

"Yes. I can't, I can't do this anymore. It's breaking my heart."

She moves away, but he captures her wrist. "Kate, I have to tell you something. Please. Let me stay long enough to tell you something. It's important. If you want me to go after I'm done, I will. But please let me tell you."

"I don't know what you can say to change anything, Castle." Her eyes are closed again.

"Please."

She sighs. "All right."

"Could we sit on the sofa?"

"Okay."

He doesn't want to let go of her hand because–because for a lot of reasons, but the most important for the moment is to keep her from leaving the room before he's said his piece. Once they've settled in, he starts. "I know that you'll never rest, really rest, until you solve your mother's case."

"Mmm."

"The night Montgomery was killed, when we were at the hangar, he confessed to you. The air was so clear, I could hear it all, even from way back where I was hiding, where he'd told me to wait for you, to take you away. He told you that your mother died because of what he and McCallister and Raglan had done, years earlier."

"I remember, Castle. Why are you bringing it all up again?"

"I'm asking you, begging you, to stop looking into your mother's case. I know you're not working on it every day, even every week, but it's always there, and you have to stop."

"Why should I? You're the one who put me back on it, for God's sake, after I'd left it alone for years."

"Because you'll be killed."

"I don't understand this, Castle. I know I'll be killed. That's exactly why I can't be with you."

He's not sure if she's angry, confused, anxious, or all three, and he's determined to be as concise as he can be, to get this out. And so he tells her everything: about the package that Montgomery sent to Smith, full of incriminating evidence against whoever is behind all this; about the deal that Smith struck; about Castle's own part in it, keeping her away from the case, about his own terse talks with Smith. By the time he finishes his throat is so dry that it hurts. "That's the reason you're alive, Kate. Not because some hired gun is waiting for the right moment to kill you, but because you stopped investigating."

She had stopped him a few times in the course of his explanation, but he'd kept going. He's exhausted now, and spent, but she's in a full-blown rage.

"You were angry because I lied about not remembering what you said when we were burying the Captain? What kind of lie is that compared to your burying a huge lead for the most important case in the world to me? How the hell could you do that?"

It's a complex question with a simple answer. "Because I love you."

"And I love you. But if the situation were reversed, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't treat you like a five-year-old who needs protection, who has to be kept in the dark. I'd tell you."

"No, you wouldn't. I know you're upset–"

"Upset? Upset?" She's long since pulled her hand away from him, but now she's pacing in front of him. "I passed upset when–"

"Kate, please. Please, listen. You forgave Montgomery. I heard you. You even said it, twice, with such sorrow but such, I don't know, love, love for him in your voice. 'I forgive you. I forgive you.' I wish you could forgive me. I saw you die. I was in the ambulance with you when you died. That was the moment that I understood what 'lights out' can really mean. If you were dead, there was no more light in the world for me. I was screaming at the paramedics, telling them they had to do something more. I was screaming at Lainie. And then when we got to the hospital they made me stay back. The doors closed after they pushed your gurney down the hall. But then you came back, don't you see? You got another chance at life. So later on when Smith, or whatever his name is, called me, I knew that I had to do whatever I could to keep you alive." He stops for breath. "If you love me as much as I love you? Tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing."

Her back is to him. She is so unsettlingly quiet now that he almost wishes she'd start shouting at him again. The air between them had been crackling; now it feels as if there's no air at all. He can't breathe. Maybe she's quiet because she can't breathe, either.

When the seemingly interminable quiet ends, he immediately regrets it. He startles when he hears a yowl come from somewhere inside her–the soul-destroying sound of a mother who has lost her child, or the unbearable groan an animal who has been hunted down but is not yet dead–and then she begins to sob. He's afraid to touch her, he's afraid not to. He walks around her so that she can see him, except that she can see nothing. "Kate," he says. "Kate."

"Leave," she finally says. "Please leave me. Please."

He will grant her that, he will. He takes his jacket from the coatrack, steps out of her apartment, and closes the door behind him.

We're like a perfect storm, he thinks, two unpredictable forces of nature who have collided and become some monstrous thing. He's too tired to sleep, and too tired not to. He puts his phone on mute, and checks it every few minutes. He thinks he does, but he might have dozed off. Is it worse to be awake, or asleep? It's been hours since he left. His back is against the wall. Funny, he says to himself, my back is against the wall in every way. He's been resting his head on his knees, but his legs are beginning to cramp, so he stretches them out. No one has seen him. Thank God for that. Thank God for that. He's alone. His phone vibrates against his left hip and he grabs it from his pocket. It's a text. From her.

"Where are you?"

He doesn't move, except to type. "Outside your front door."

TBC

 **A/N** Thanks to reviewer SusanCastleFan49 for saying after an earlier chapter that "the two of them are like a perfect storm." I used her phrase because I think it's a perfect description of them at this point.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.

 **A/N** I apologize for the long delay since the last chapter, but I had enormous project, and was working on it 16 hours a day. The wait for the next chapter will be much shorter.

Kate has always been aware of her body, attuned to it: what's slightly off, what isn't; what she should pay attention to, what she can ignore; when she can press, when she can't. In large part it's because she has always been a very good athlete, and remains a dedicated runner. But it's also because she's a cop, and is mindful of being able to react quickly to difficult situations not just mentally but physically. She works out in the precinct gym at least three times a week, and knows every muscle twitch, every change in respiration, every acceleration or deceleration of her heart rate. The last has been especially true since she'd been shot. Her PTSD can have an extreme effect on it, but with Dr. Burke's help she has learned ways to cope. Most of the time.

Her heart has been racing since Castle left, however long ago that was. It must have been hours–many hours: she'd just glanced out the window and had been startled to see that night had fallen. When she'd finally quieted her heart, she'd texted him. But when she read his reply, her cardiac rate soared. He's outside her front door? Are they having a mind meld? She'd thought that she'd composed herself, but apparently she hadn't. Still, he's here, just a few feet away, and she has to let him in. With a gait that she knows is unsteady, she approaches the door; with a hand that she knows is trembling, she turns the knob.

"Castle?"

He's brushing his hands across his thighs, and he looks rumpled, as if he'd been sleeping in his clothes.

"Castle?" she says again. "Have you–. Did you–. Have you, um, been?" She's tried three sentences and is incapable of finishing any of them. She holds tight to the doorknob, which may be the only thing that's keeping her upright.

His gaze is steady, and so is voice, but both are also soft. "Have I been here the whole time? Yeah."

"Why?"

"I guess I was hoping that eventually you'd open the door."

"Oh."

"And you have."

"Yes."

He catches sight of her right hand, which is gripping the doorknob so hard that he wonders if it might snap off. Her left hand has gone to her chest, pressing forcefully on the spot where her scar must be, as if the bullet were still lodged in her heart and she were trying to shove it out through her back. It's one of her tells–though her touch is usually much lighter–and she'd been shocked when he'd told her about it earlier today. Wait. Today? That had been today? It feels like a decade ago. He drops his eyes for a moment, and then raises them again. He'd hoped that she was calmer than she'd been, but now he worries that she's still a wreck. "Are you all right?"

"All right? I don't know, exactly. I mean." She sags against the door. "Would you like to come in?"

"Yes, please." He steps over the doorsill, feeling a little awkward. At least she hasn't freaked out that he'd been sitting on the floor for so long, propped up next to her door. "I think I might have dozed off a bit. Good thing your neighbor didn't walk by. Might have thought I was some creepy stalker and called the cops."

"I'm a cop."

"Right." He walks farther into the apartment, and sees their abandoned breakfast still on the little table. The edges of the toast on the egg sandwiches have curled up; the coffee has left stains inside the mugs. Unappetizing as the scene is, it also makes him realize just how hungry he is. "I hope we're about to have a long talk, I really hope." He feels his eyebrows raise slightly, of their own accord. "Are we?"

She nods, and that's good enough for him.

"It's just that I'm starving. I was hungry before, when I got that food, and then I wasn't."

"I know," she says, so quietly he barely hears her. "Me, too."

"I was thinking, could we go out for something to eat first? Easy, comfort food. Like pizza, maybe. But not eat it here. Maybe it would be good to be on neutral territory." Her eyes are suddenly cloudy; she looks uneasy. "I don't mean like we're in a war, Kate," he adds hastily. "Just that a place outside has no–. No associations. And we could talk afterwards. Here, if you like. Okay?"

She nods again.

"Is there a good pizza place nearby? Where we could sit down?"

"Giambelli's. They have booths. Two blocks away."

"Good. Do you have an umbrella I could borrow? It's pouring."

"Go you one better, Castle," she says, and smiles. "I'll share one with you."

In his four decades on earth, he had never been excited about the prospect of an umbrella. Until now. A few minutes later, when they're walking together under it, he has two conflicting urges. The first is to put his hand over hers on the handle and kiss her; the second is to run to the nearest lamp post, twirl around it, and break into "Singin' in the Rain." He does neither.

"Back booth," she says, pointing to the far left-hand corner as they enter Giambelli's. It's a busy Saturday night, but with the stormy weather and the time–it's close to eleven o'clock–the place isn't wall-to-wall humans.

"Speaking of sharing," he says, once they're seated, "would you like to share a pizza?"

"Would this be a fifty-fifty share? Seventy-five-twenty-five?"

"I've never seen you eat half a pizza, Beckett. Not even a quarter of a pie. In fact, the only time I saw you eat more than one slice was after the alien abduction case."

"It wasn't aliens, Castle."

"Fine, fine, but we went out for pizza, remember? When you picked up that second piece I figured the stuff they injected us with must have affected your appetite."

Nope, she thinks, what affected my appetite was how adorable you looked. He'd looked good enough to eat. But she hadn't. Eaten him, that is, though she'd been tempted to grab him by the elbow and take him home with her. She pulls a napkin from the dispenser in the middle of the table and coughs into it–a cough she fakes to cover up the laugh that she's shoving back down her throat.

"You okay?"

"Fine. Just a tickle. Let's get the pizza. And beer."

"And beer. Deal."

The pizza is so hot when the server delivers it that the cheese is still bubbling. The expression on her face is priceless. When she carefully extracts a slice he picks up his phone and takes a photograph.

"Castle!"

"What?"

"You took a picture of me!"

"Had to. You were looking at that as if it were the winning lottery ticket."

"I never buy lottery tickets."

"Okay, you were looking at that as if it were a first-edition, autographed copy of _War and Peace_."

"That's more like it. But hand over that phone."

He shakes his head. "Absolutely not."

"I don't want you showing someone a picture of me with mozzarella hanging out of my mouth, and I don't even have on any makeup. Just me wearing gooey cheese."

"First of all, Beckett, the mozzarella wasn't hanging out of your mouth. Your mouth was hovering over it in a decidedly lupine way." Her look had been lupine, he thinks, but she would be the most beautiful wolf on the planet. "And second, I won't show it to anyone."

"Uh huh."

It happens when he's savoring his third bite. He should have known better than to let his guard down: too late he sees her grab his phone, and now she's looking at the picture on it.

"There better not be any other compromising shots of me in here."

"There aren't. I promise. And when could I have ever taken a compromising picture of you, anyway?" Oh, if she only knew. Except they're gone now, every photograph in the entire glorious album that he had, in a misbegotten and drunken rage, deleted.

She squints suspiciously at him and slides the phone back across the table. "Better not be kidding."

"Not kidding."

After that they eat quickly, to fill their empty stomachs as well as the empty-but-not-empty space between them. They reminisce about an old case, which each privately and silently acknowledges is safe territory.

"So, Beckett," he says, wiping his mouth with yet another paper napkin.

It hasn't escaped her notice that for the last hour or so, since he'd come back into her apartment, that she's been Beckett, not Kate. She doesn't need Dr. Burke to interpret that. "So, Castle."

"So," he waves his hand over the pizza pan, "the share was two thirds, one third. Maybe not quite one third, since you didn't finish your second slice."

"The beer filled me up. You managed to eat four slices, though. I'm impressed."

"But not surprised."

"Not in the slightest."

"In my defense, it counted as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I haven't eaten all day."

On the way out he makes a detour to the counter and buys two containers of gelato to go. "Might be hungry later," he says cheerfully, swinging the take-out bag.

"You talking about you or me?"

"Either. Both."

It's still raining hard, and the temperature has dropped so hard and fast that it feels more like the middle of January than the beginning of April. On the short walk back to her apartment he does put his hand over hers on the umbrella handle, but he doesn't dare kiss her.

When they reach her place she says, "Just a sec," and disappears into her bedroom. When she returns she's wearing a heavy sweater and slippers, and carrying two blankets. "I'm freezing," she says, offering him a blue wool throw. "Thought you might be, too."

Her hand is on her chest again, and he wonders if she ever makes that unconscious, self-conscious movement when she's alone. "You know," she says, "I feel like we made up for a lot of lost time today. Talking about things. We talked a lot. That's good, right?"

It's not just a question that he hears, it's a plea. "It's very good."

"You were sort of right about something else, too." She shivers.

"You still cold, Beck–. Kate?"

"Yeah. But I'm gonna wrap myself up in this blanket."

"Okay." God, this is torture. "What else was I sort of right about?"

"What I started to say before I asked you to leave. But first I want to make sure that you know I didn't ask you to leave because I was mad. I hope you know that. I wasn't mad, I was heartbroken because I thought I had to say goodbye to you. But there's something I need to say. I need to finish what I started to say."

"Okay."

"That you were sort of right, that maybe I'd have done what you did. If the shoe were on the other foot. Or slipper." She looks down, slightly befuddled. "If the slipper were on the other foot."

She's so serious, this is so serious, but there's also something so touching about the way she's expressing himself that he's having a hard time holding himself in check. He's going to let her run–meander, more like it–with it.

"If our positions were reversed, maybe I wouldn't have told you either, at least at first. To keep you safe. But I would have eventually. And there's a big difference. Important difference."

"What's the difference?" he asks, swaddling himself in the blanket she'd given him. They're standing about six feet apart, in the middle of her living room. There's only one lamp on, but it's behind her, and makes her glow slightly.

"That I'm a woman."

"I don't understand."

"I was furious at Montgomery, and devastated, but even there in that hangar I had some understanding of why he hadn't told me. It wasn't just guilt, it was protectiveness. He was kind of like a father to me. You know that. But your not telling me is different."

"How?"

"Because by keeping me in the dark, by secretly keeping me from pursuing my mother's case, you infantilized me. Nobody would do that to a man. Not treat him like an adult, not let him have a part in that decision. After all this time working together, I never would have thought that you'd do that, treat me like a child, not trust me. Knowing that you acted out of love helps, but it doesn't exonerate you." She closes her eyes, and sways, and he takes her elbow to stabilize her.

"Sorry, Castle. I'm exhausted. Let's sit down."

Once he's made sure that she's safely on the sofa, he plops down next to her, engulfed in weariness, both from lack of sleep and from the wildness of his mood swings. "Okay. I see your point, I do." He bites down hard, mindful of what he's going to say. So much is riding on all of this. "But I want, hope, that you'll see my point about something, too. I'm asking you please, please not to make a unilateral decision, either. About my safety. You told me that you love me beyond all imagining, which is exactly how I love you. Not an hour goes by that I'm not grateful–grateful beyond all imagining–that you came into my life. So don't I deserve to have a say in this decision about my safety? That I will take the risk? That love like this is worth every insane risk there is? And together can't we make the risks less insane? That together maybe we can figure out how to do that? Figure out some way safely to look into your mother's case, piece by tiny piece? There must be a way. But for now, for a little while, not do anything but have some time for each other, together?"

She's been looking straight at him the entire time, through his whole spontaneous soliloquy. She must have blinked at some point, more than once, but he'd never seen it. It's as if she's suspended, put on hold. Then, though the rest of her doesn't move, her hand emerges from her woolen cocoon and comes to rest on his thigh.

She stays like that for some variation on eternity, and then says softly, "We've hurt each other so much. These aren't scratches we've inflicted, they're deep cuts. They're wounds. They need to heal. I want to do this, Castle. I want this. I look at your beautiful eyes–" she takes her hand from his leg and runs one fingertip under his left eye, again and again. "I see all the love there, but I can see all the way in, all the way to the back, and see the pain that's there. The pain that I'm responsible for, that I put there. Maybe you see the same in mine. I want–." She stops again, but this time she turns her head to the window before slowly turning back to him. "What was the first book that blew you away? That you could read a hundred times?"

He has no idea where she's going, but he answers. "Easy. _Catcher in the Rye_."

"How old were you?"

"Thirteen. Read it in English class."

"I should have said, what was the first book that you found as an adult, on your own, that did that?"

No one had ever asked him that and he has to consider it for a moment. " _Perfume_ , by Patrick Suskind. I was in college, but I found a copy that someone had left behind on the subway, and I picked it up. And since I had a half-hour ride ahead to see some girl in Bay Ridge, I started reading. Missed my stop. In fact, I went all the way to the end of the line without realizing it." He considers again. "What made you ask me that?"

"Because it's an important part of you that I don't know." Her hand is on the move again, this time to lace her fingers with his. "I want to begin this, this new thing, by asking you on a date. I want to take you to dinner and you can tell me all about _Perfume_."

Wow. And wow again. "Is tomorrow night too soon?"

"No. Tomorrow night sounds perfect."

"I think that's my cue to go home."

"I think it is."

"May I kiss you first?"

"Yes."

TBC

 **A/N** Thank you for all the support for this; I appreciate it very, very much.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.

She's chosen a tiny place that she adores–affordable and rustic, but with a low-key elegance–tucked away on a side street on the Upper West Side. When they arrive at the entrance Castle snaps his head to the right and looks at the restaurant across the way.

"Joanne Trattoria? Don't Lady Gaga's parents own that?"

Dammit, would he rather have gone there? She's a little nervous about their first date. "Yes, they do, but it's Italian. Since _Perfume_ is set in France, we're having dinner here, in the closest thing I know to France in the city." She leads the way down the crooked flight of stairs and hears him say, "Ooh, nice." Feels him say it, too, his breath warm against the back of her neck.

She still feels jumpy when they order. Does the menu have enough variety? Is the table too small? Does he feel cramped? He's a big guy, after all. As soon as the salad arrives she asks him about the book, and the first thing he does is admit that he'd picked it up only because of the cover.

"It was a painting of a gorgeous, bare-breasted woman sleeping on her side, one arm dangling seductively off the bed, or whatever it was. And before you roll your eyes at me, please remember that I was nineteen. Anyway, when I looked a little closer–and yes, I looked very closely–I saw the subtitle of the book was _The Story of a Murderer_. And I thought, whoa, that's a surprise: not the story of a murder, but a murder _er_. And then I realized that the drop-dead beautiful naked woman might in fact be dead, not asleep."

She'd read a couple of reviews before meeting him, so she knew the gist of the story, but hearing him talk about it is heart- and mind-opening. "This murderer, named Grenouille–which is why I will never, ever eat frog's legs again–is born into the worst kind of poverty in eighteenth-century Paris, and abandoned by his mother. She just leaves him there on the street, a baby. Everything smells disgusting. It's olfactory hell–you can't believe how Suskind writes about it, incredible. Everything reeks except this baby, Grenouille: he emits no smell at all. It's as if he doesn't exist. He's a freak. A freak, maybe the devil's spawn, who becomes obsessed with smell, with creating a perfume so magnificent that it will make him a god. But to do it he has to become a killer, over and over and over. In all this stench–." He puts down his spoon. "Maybe I shouldn't talk about this while we're eating."

"No, no, go ahead," she urges him. "It won't bother me." And it doesn't, because she's so taken by his memories of reading this book, his excitement in the the story and the use of language, that she's hardly even aware of her food. She thinks, not for the first time, what a phenomenal teacher he'd be.

"Okay, if you're sure," he says, tentatively picking up the spoon again.

"Castle, how many putrefying corpses have I examined while drinking coffee?"

"Very nice, Beckett, 'putrefying corpses.' I'm not sure I can finish this salad."

"Oh, I bet you can. I've seen you eat baklava over a body that's been dead for three days."

"That was only once."

"Only once with baklava. There was that time with a PB and J sandwich when Lanie yelled at you because some of the jelly dropped onto the gash in the vic's head. And then during that last-blast heat wave in September when your pistachio ice cream–"

"Fine, fine, point taken."

"Good. Now keep talking."

And he does. Castle is never reluctant to talk, and he hasn't been tonight. He finishes halfway through his shell steak with cognac sauce. "It's the book that made me want to write about crime, and obsession."

"I'd say that I have to read it, but I feel as if I have. And I mean that as a compliment." She takes a sip of wine and smiles at him over the rim of the glass. "You're a hell of a story teller, Castle, even when it's not your story."

"Thank you. Apparently it was a great translation, but it makes me wish that I had your gift for language. I envy you being able to read something like _Madame Bovary_ or _The Red and the Black_ in the original."

"If it's any comfort, I don't speak German. So I couldn't read _Perfume_ except in translation either."

They've finished dessert now–or he has; she didn't touch hers–and she's both happy and relieved. When the server comes with the bill, Castle reaches for his credit card, and she stops him.

"My treat, Castle."

"Nope, mine. No argument."

"I'll tell you what. I'll let you pay, with one proviso."

"Proviso, huh? I'll see your proviso and raise you one."

"Nope, just one."

"Okay, what?"

"We arm wrestle for it."

He laughs so hard that a woman three tables away from them turns and stares. "You seriously think you can beat me at that? Have you checked my biceps?"

Has she checked his biceps? She almost blushes at her thoughts about his biceps and what he can do with them, and her thoughts have nothing at all to do with arm wrestling. "I'm aware of your biceps, Castle, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve."

He laughs again. "You win. But only because it's not seemly to arm wrestle in a place like this."

"Are you saying that there's a place that you would arm wrestle me?"

"Take me home and I'll show you."

The server is standing awkwardly next to her, an obviously well-practiced look of disinterest on his face. She hands him her credit card. " _Merci_ ," she says.

As soon as the man leaves Castle yelps, "Did you just kick me?"

" _Oui_."

"I was hoping it was just an overzealous version of footsie."

" _Non_."

"I thought we were done inflicting wounds, Beckett."

That should sting, but she can't help smiling at it. "We are. Sorry."

"Didn't really hurt."

She extends her right leg a little, toes off her shoe, and massages his ankle with her arch. "Hope that wasn't too zealous for you," she says, withdrawing her foot.

"Just right," he squeaks. "On the zealousity scale. Perfect."

In the cab on the way downtown he puts his hand on her knee. "Thank you, Kate. That was wonderful."

"You're welcome." She feels like a shy 15-year-old.

"You going to tell me what the first book was that blew you away? Not as a kid."

"Not saying."

"Why not? Was it porn? Are you embarrassed to tell me?"

"It wasn't porn, Castle. You boys and your erotic fantasies, please."

"Then why won't you say?"

"Because you should think of something different to ask me, that's why. Not the same thing that I asked you."

"Fair enough." He sits quietly for the rest of the ride, looking out the window and absent-mindedly stroking her knee with his thumb.

She fights the urge to squeeze her legs together, but it's not easy. Looking through her own window she's relieved to see that they're only a few blocks from her apartment. Just as the driver is pulling up to her building, Castle turns to her and announces, "I know what I want to ask you," and she simultaneously turns to him and says, "Want to come up for coffee?" After which they respond, this time as one, "Okay."

"May I pay for the cab?" he asks.

"That would be nice. Yes. Thank you."

"No arm wrestling?"

"Nope."

"Sorry to hear it."

When they're walking down the hall to her door he says, "You know what? They have to fix your elevator. I feel like I'm in an episode of _The Big Bang Theory_."

"Don't be a baby. We had to walk up only two flights of stairs."

"You probably never use it anyway, fitness freak that you are."

"Well, that's just another thing you'll have to find out about me."

"Woman of mystery," he whispers as she turns her key in the lock.

"So I'm told," she says over her shoulder. "A mystery writer based a character on me, you know." And with that she flips on the overhead light in the kitchen and starts some coffee.

He opens the plastic bag that he'd brought back from the restaurant and peers inside. "Do you want your hazelnut mousse?"

"No room. Do you?"

"You don't want to save it for tomorrow?"

"No. You have it. There's a spoon in the drawer right behind you."

"I'll get two, just in case. You might change your mind and want a bite."

As she pours the coffee into a pair of mugs she runs through a mental list of what he might ask her, and comes up with nothing. He'd been uncommonly quiet on the way here, which makes her wonder if it's something serious, but he's been cheery since they got out of the taxi. Hmmm.

He smiles when she hands him a coffee. "Salut."

"Salut."

"What's the worst grade you ever got?"

"Really? You thought about a question for at least fifteen minutes, and that's it?"

"No, it's leading up to it. What's the worst grade you ever got?"

"I got a B once. On a midterm."

"Oh, my God, hang your head in shame. B? In what?"

"Physics, in eleventh grade."

"Let me guess. You were so disgusted with yourself that you studied and studied and studied and pulled all-nighters and ended up with an A for the course."

"A minus."

"See," he says, reaching for the dish of mousse, "that's the lead-in to my question. I've screwed up so many things in my life that I've lost count. Got kicked out of three schools and was suspended more than that. Never got off the bench in any sport, even dodgeball. Totaled my vintage Jaguar XKE the day after I bought it, which was the same week I got arrested for riding a police horse while drunk and naked. Been divorced twice–would have been three if I'd been dumb enough to remarry Gina, which I actually considered for a few misbegotten moments. That would have lasted maybe a month."

She's shocked by this turn in the conversation. He's not full of self-pity nor of remorse. It's just that he's the most optimistic person she knows, as well as one of the most confident. He was so cocky about everything when she first knew him that she frequently wanted to ask the captain to get rid of him. But hearing him recite this list, like this, wow. She hadn't even known about the sports, or the Jag, or that he had briefly thought about remarrying Gina. He has paused to take a bite of dessert, but she's pretty sure that he's going to continue in this vein, and she wants to end it.

"Well, while enumerating your failures, Castle, how about mentioning, for starters, what an incredible father you are? Or that you've written twenty-six best-sellers?"

His tongue flicks out to the corner of his mouth and licks off the dab of mousse. "I didn't say I was without success. I take pride in it. A lot. It's just that I've got a bad record in a lot of areas, and except for athletics–for which I have no gift–it's all my own doing. But there's nothing I can think of which you don't, or can't, excel at, mentally or physically. I'm not remotely jealous of that. I'm kind of in awe. So here's my question. Have you ever failed at something? We've both lived through some really hard times, particularly you, but that's not what I'm talking about. I mean falling-down-the-stairs, all-your-own-fault, monumentally screwed up?"

If she'd been shocked a minute ago, she has no word for what she is now. Castle would, because he has a word for everything, but she doesn't. "Is that what you think? That I've never failed at anything? I've screwed up a million things. But there are two that make any of yours seem insignificant." She breaks off to calm her breathing. In-out-in-out-in-out-in-out. "I haven't caught the person behind my mother's murder, Castle."

He reacts physically to that–flinches as if he's been hit by a Taser–before reaching out and taking her hand. "Kate. Kate. You can't possibly think that that's your fault. That's not on you. Please, that's not what I meant. It's–"

"It _is_ on me Castle. Me," she slaps herself hard on the chest. "Me, the youngest woman in the NYPD to make detective. I have made so many damn wrong turns on this case, so many terrible decisions."

Now he squeezes her hand. "I'm sorry. If I'd thought that was how you'd answer my question, I never would have asked it. I'm an idiot. Let go of it, okay? Please, let go of it."

She knows he means let go of the question, but suddenly she does let go of all of it. The guilt and the self-loathing about not solving her mother's homicide. She lets go of it. The other day he'd told her that he'd work with her on her mother's case, but it's only now that his optimism, his hopeful nature, leaps from him to her. They're in this together. Not just the case, but this. This everything. This.

"Tell me the other one."

"The other one just changed." That hadn't been what she intended to say.

"What? How?"

"The other thing is, was, that I've never given my heart to anyone. Never opened up. Never trusted anyone or loved anyone enough. And that's a horrible failure. It horrifies me." She's so light now. She feels as light as she ever has in her life. And she looks at him as she has never looked before, and says, "Until now. Now I have. I've finally succeeded. You made me open up, Castle, and you have it. You have my heart."

TBC

 **A/N** Thank you for the lovely reviews, especially all you who post anonymously. I thank you here.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.

 _You have my heart._

His mind has never moved as fast as it does now. _You have my heart._ He sees, thinks he sees, her heart in his hand–her actual heart, a beating thing. His mind is playing tricks; this can't be her real heart, but an image that springs from the remembered aftermath of her shooting. You have her heart, he tells himself. I have her heart. He looks down at his palm again, and what he sees this time, pictures there, is a paper heart. A Valentine. A bright-red shape that comes to a point at the bottom, while the top is two symmetrical arcs that meet in the middle. Maybe that's what they are now: two arcs that have, at last, met in the middle.

 _You have my heart._

He shuts his eyes, and keeps them closed for a long time. He thinks it's a long time. He could have counted to 1,000, couldn't he? He's afraid to open his eyes again in case he's dreamed all of this, and her heart isn't his at all. He knows that she's here, can smell traces of her perfume, can feel the warmth of her body just inches from his, but he's not convinced that she said it. _You have my heart._ He could have conjured that up. He cautiously opens his eyes. The Valentine is gone. His hand is empty. And so he raises his head slowly, until her face is in view, and sees–sees what? Love. It looks exactly like love. He's sure of it. "I have your heart?" he asks in wonder, still stunned.

"Yes," she says.

"I will. I–I will. I'll take such good care of it, Kate. I promise. And you have mine. You know that, don't you? You have my heart." He reaches out and takes her fingers, kisses them, and presses them against his chest. "It's yours."

"It is?"

"Yes."

"I'll take such good care of it, Castle."

They sit that way for a while. Time has essentially disappeared for both of them. Neither moves. They have so much to say, and no need to say it. Everything he wants or needs is in her eyes, everything for her is in his.

"I can feel it," she says at last, her voice low.

"What?"

"Your heart beat. It's slower than mine, though."

"It is? I'm amazed you can't actually see it. Feels as though it's about to explode through my chest."

"I hope not, Castle. One open-heart surgery in this family is enough."

His mind may be foggy–is foggy, in the best possible way–but he knows what he heard. "This family." He and she are family, in her mind. Maybe her mind is as foggy as his, but she said it. And just as he's filing that in a new mental folder that he's labeling FAMILY, the phone in his rear pocket buzzes. He's so startled that he jumps, which knocks Kate's hand from his chest.

"Sorry, sorry," he says, fumbling for the cell. "It's Alexis." He clicks on her text.

"Dad, where are you? Are you OK? Gram and I have been home for hours. I'm worried."

They've been home for hours? How can that be? He looks at the screen again. Oh. Oh, shit. It's getting on for 1 a.m. He's completely taken aback. Before he can type a reply, another text comes in.

"Please tell me you didn't go to Vegas again."

He answers immediately. "No, I swear! Went out to dinner and lost track of time. Coming right home."

So does she. "It's OK. Going to bed. School tomorrow."

"Coming home anyway. You may be 17 but I still get to tuck you in, metaphorically."

He wrinkles his nose. "I'm an idiot. Forgot to text or leave Alexis a note that I was going out and she was worried." He tactfully omits mentioning her second text. "It's almost one o'clock."

"Can't be." Her eyes drop to her father's watch. "Oh, my God. I didn't realize that we, you know."

"That we'd been talking for so long? Neither did I." He grimaces. "I'm going home. Want to see my kid before she goes to sleep. And speaking of sleep, you need it, too. You have to leave for work in six hours or something." Reluctantly, he gets to his feet. "I'll come by the precinct with your coffee, okay?"

"No, don't."

"Don't come? You don't want me to come?" He hopes that he doesn't sound as disappointed as he feels.

"Of course do, Castle, but I won't be there. I'm on vacation."

"Vacation?" That's 10,000 times more surprising than the face that it's well after midnight. "You never go on vacation. Besides, you're here. Shouldn't you be in, I dunno, someplace warm? With a beach? Where you can wear an almost illegally tiny bikini?"

"I wear a one-piece, now." She looks sideways before adding, awkwardly, "Scars."

Ouch. Except he wouldn't care that her scars were showing, ever. "So you're having a staycation? The Captain forcing you to take some time off?"

She colors slightly. "Actually, I forced her to let me. We'll talk about it tomorrow. Go home to your daughter." She gives him a little nudge towards the door, and when they're almost there she grabs the back of his shirt and spins him around. She takes his face in her hands and says, "But first, I get to do this." She kisses him long and hard, until she's out of breath, and so is he.

Half an hour later he's gotten a two-minute highlights-of-the-weekend recitation from Alexis, gone back downstairs, stripped to his underwear, and brushed his teeth. "Could we go on a second date?" he types to Kate as he sits up in bed.

"Yes," comes her rapid reply.

"How about nine o'clock?"

"I like to eat dinner a little earlier. Maybe seven thirty?"

"I meant breakfast."

"You're on."

"Here. My place."

"Okay. Night."

"Night."

He beams like a 14-year-old who just invited the coolest girl in school to a dance, and she said yes. He's about to plug his phone into the charger when it pings again. She's sent him a heart. No, two hearts. "Me, too," he types, then slides under the covers, allowing himself to imagine what it will be like when she's under the covers with him.

By 8:30 the next morning Alexis has left for school and his mother, thank goodness, to a very early hair appointment. "The red needs a bit of rejuvenation, darling," she says to him, as she sails out the door on a cloud of Dior's J'adore perfume.

When Kate knocks on the door, bacon is already in the skillet, brioches are warming in the oven, and eggs in their coddlers are submerged in simmering water.

It's an easy breakfast, no tension, an ideal, low-key second date. They chat about nothing in particular. "Mmmmmm," she says, draining her glass. "This juice is incredible."

"Passion fruit."

"Very subtle, Castle." She winks. She'd deny it if he called her on it, so he won't. He'll just savor it in silence.

"I chose it because it's very high in vitamin C."

"Right." She pushes a folded piece of paper across the table.

"What's this?" he asks, picking it up.

"Answers."

"To what?"

"Questions I thought you might ask me."

"About what?"

"Little things, big things. We've been partners for more than three years, but you have a million questions. I know you do. So I made a list of answers."

He laughs. "So, kind of like personalized _Jeopardy_?" He quickly scans the list. "What's raspberries? First thing on here."

"Favorite fruit."

" 'In My Life'?"

"Favorite Beatles song. Favorite song, period. Always makes me think of my mom. She loved it. I played it every day for months after she died."

"English horn?"

"Favorite instrument."

"Huh. Odd choice."

"Not odd, Castle. Gorgeous."

"I'll take your word for it. Let's see." He looks farther down. "Who's Neal?"

"First guy I slept with. And before you ask, no, I will not tell you his last name. I regretted it immediately."

"The sex?"

"No. Neal."

"Okay, moving right along. Kangaroo. Don't tell me. Favorite animal."

"No, my favorite animal is the dog. Dogs. All kinds. But a kangaroo is the animal I'd most like to see up close. And in the wild."

"Another interesting choice."

She shrugs. "Always had a huge soft spot for them. And I've never been to Australia."

It he called his travel agent now, they could be on a plane to Sydney by dinnertime. He should probably wait. Good idea for a birthday present, though. "OK, _Crime and Punishment_. Bet I know the question." He looks over the top of the paper. "The one I wanted to ask you last night, right? First book you read as an adult that knocked your socks off."

"Yes. I wasn't quite an adult, but I found it on my own when I was fifteen. I was full of adolescent angst, so it spoke to that."

"Geez, cheery. Okay, here's another. Left hip? What's that?"

"C'mon, Castle. You can figure that one out."

"Left hip?"

"Think about it."

"I'd love to think about your left hip. Right one, too." He hums. "But I got nothin'."

"Tattoo. It's where my tattoo is."

He gasps. He feels giddy. "You're killing me, here, Kate. You must know that."

"Well, I hope not. I'd like you to stay alive so that you can see it. Find it for yourself."

With those three short sentences, the low-key second date turns into something else. She's flirting, but she's not flirting; she's joking, but she's not. He briefly switches his focus from her face to her hands, then back again. Does she know that she's shredding half a brioche, that little bits of it are all over the table top? That the tone of her voice when she said "find it for yourself" was not the same as it had been right before? He's still nervous about making a misstep, but he'd bet a lot that she is, too. The brioche crumbs are a good clue.

"Is that the passion fruit juice talking, Kate?"

"No. No, I'm pretty clear-headed. With this coffee. Your coffee is strong."

"So, this tattoo, is it a cup of coffee? Which I sometimes think is the most important thing in your life."

"You do?"

"Oh, I've seen you lust after really good coffee. I think your pupils might even dilate."

"That sounds more like a junkie." She smiles when she says it.

"No, definitely erot–uh, romantic. Coffee, your true love."

Her expression is suddenly serious, and she reaches out to take the piece of paper that he'd set down next to his spoon. "Could I borrow a pen, please?"

A pen? "Of course." He stands and walks over to the counter by the fridge, fetches a pen from the drawer, and brings it to her. She writes something, very deliberately, and passes the paper back to him.

"Me?"

"Yes, you, Castle. You're the answer to the question, 'Who's Kate Beckett's one true love?'"

"Not coffee?"

"Not coffee." She stops, but now she's shredding her napkin. "You're the answer to another question, too."

"I am?"

"Yes."

"What's the question?"

" 'Whose initials did Kate Beckett tattoo on her hip last year?' Would you like to see them? I mean it, the tattoo?"

 **A/N** Thank you for your support and enthusiasm; it makes all the difference.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.

 **A/N** This chapter goes into M territory for a while. If you'd like to skip that section, please stop reading at the sentence that begins "With the tip of his index finger," and pick up again at "It takes several minutes for them to recover."

Would he like to see her tattoo? No matter where he puts the emphasis on her question–Would he _like_ to see her tattoo? Would he like to _see_ her tattoo? Would he like to see her _tattoo_?–the answer is the same.

"Yes." That comes out with a little unwanted tremble, so he tries again. "Yes, I would. Yes."

"Is there anyone here? I mean, besides the two of us?" Her voice is steady, but it's also shy.

"No. Alexis is at school, and my mother has gone to the hairdresser."

"Oh, so Martha's coming back?" He's confident that what he hears is shyness, but now it's laced with disappointment.

"Not for hours. She's having her color done. She calls it her 'regularly scheduled upkeep and rejuvenation'."

Kate appears to be examining her plate, but eventually she raises her head. "You know when I stayed here, before, after my apartment blew up? I, um, I looked in your bedroom once. Actually, twice. So nosy, right?"

"You're a detective. Detectives are supposed to look at things. Besides, as the Emperor of Nosiness, I could hardly object." Object? He's ecstatic. Where did she look? Did she open the drawers? The closet? Pick up framed photos? Sit on the bed? Put her head on his pillow? Peek in his nightstand? He's tempted to say, "Find anything you like?" but he doesn't want to turn this into a joke.

"It's a wonderful room, Castle. It says a lot about you. It's beautiful." She stops. He doesn't want her to stop there. She looks as if she's thinking of saying something more, and she does. "I wanted you to know that I've seen it, so if we go in there now, I don't have to pretend to be surprised. Or anything."

If they go in there? They're going into his bedroom? "Kate," he says, as quietly and calmly as he can. "You never have to pretend with me. Ever."

Very slowly, but without hesitation or awkwardness, she pushes her chair away from the table, stands up and offers him her hand. As soon as he's on his feet, he takes it. She laces her fingers through his, and gives them a gentle tug. "Let's go," she says, nodding in the direction of his room. He should know the distance from here to his bed–maybe not exactly, but he should know the length of the living room, the width of his office, the space they're about to cover, but he doesn't. He must, but he can't bring it to mind when his mind is full of nothing but her–crowded, overflowing with Kate Beckett. Kate Beckett, who's clutching his hand and taking him to bed. His bed. At least he thinks so.

As if by agreement, though neither has said a word, they stop just inside the bedroom door. So anxious had he been this morning to feed his daughter and usher his mother out the door so that he could get breakfast ready for Kate that he hadn't opened the curtains or made the bed. The skies are leaden, and though the room isn't dark, it's shadowy. Romantic. He thinks it's romantic, anyway. But the rumpled bed? "I'm sorry about the bed. I didn't have a chance to make it this morning, I mean I didn't take the time. I usually do. I didn't think that we'd be. Um."

"That we'd be in here? Neither did I," she says, her voice low and velvety as she lets go of his hand. She grabs the hem of her long, purplish blue sweater, pulls it over her head, and lets it fall to the floor.

With the tip of his index finger, he traces the lacy trim on the wisp of a camisole that she's wearing. "Let me," he says, his voice also low. But before he takes it off, he brushes her cheek with the backs of his fingers, and she leans in to his touch. And then there's nothing to do but kiss her; he has to kiss her, and she kisses him back. The slow pace that he'd set, or had intended to set, the one that he had briefly labeled adagio, as if this were music–well, it is music–vanishes. She's music, a masterpiece of composition, but the tempo is very fast now as her tongue wildly explores his mouth and his, hers. She's unbuttoning his shirt, and he moves his hands from her hair to her waist, and slips them under the camisole. From there he slides them upwards to her bra, but instead he encounters the soft underside of her breasts, then her nipples, which are already taut.

"No bra?" he asks, breaking off their kiss. He hadn't meant to say it, but astonishment had pushed the question out of his mouth.

"I guess I was in a hurry to get here," she replies, and then smiles.

They're both short of breath. When she lets go of his shirt, which is now fully open, he strips off her camisole. "You're perfect," he says, his eyes wide and fixed on her breasts.

Suddenly, she covers the middle of her chest with her hand. "No, I'm not. I'm not."

As tenderly as possible, he lifts her hand away and looks at the circular scar, the physical reminder, as if she needed one, of the bullet that had lodged in her heart last spring. "You're perfect because you survived this, Kate. You're absolutely perfect."

"Look at this, Castle," she says, touching the scar left from the emergency surgery she'd had after the shooting. "Nothing perfect about this."

"It's perfect if it's the result of something that saved your life."

He kisses her again, and when he pulls her flush against him almost gasps at their first skin-to-skin contact. He wants more, craves more. He wants all of her, every bit of her, and blindly struggles to unbutton and unzip her pants.

"Me, too, Castle," she mumbles, grabbing him by the belt loop of his jeans. They both toe off their shoes and kick off their pants. "Wow," she says, admiring his blue silk boxers, but obviously admiring the bulge under them far more.

His back is to the bed, so she has the advantage and takes it, giving him a shove that makes him topples onto the mattress. She promptly lands on top of him, and stretching his waistband says, "I'm taking these off, Castle. Releasing the prisoner." The prisoner, freed from its silky confines, is fully erect, and without warning she takes him in her mouth.

Is this Heaven, he wonders? Am I in Heaven? It can't be, can it? What angel could do, would be allowed to do, what Kate is doing to him? Maybe this is X-rated Heaven, for adults with otherwise exemplary behavior. Holy everything, what a mouth she has.

Exercising restraint of a kind he may never have before, he says, "Kate. Stop. Please stop."

She rises to her knees, shins flanking his thighs, calves tight against him. "You want me to stop?" She sounds and looks bewildered.

"Yes. I mean no, but yes. I don't want to finish me off, knock me out, before we've done this together. I want you, I want us, first." He reaches out and pulls her up until they're nose to nose, and then all restraint, his and hers, is gone. By the time he enters her, they're so slick with sweat that it's like some extraordinary external lubricant. He has never had sex with someone as strong as she, who can meet every challenge he gives her, and yet also so soft. It is the most arousing thing he has ever known.

"Jesus, Castle, I don't know how long I can hang on."

"Should I–"

"No, no, no, keep going, keep going. Deeper, de–."

And then she screams, drawing him in with such force that he feels as if he'll explode. And he does.

It takes them several minutes to recover. "That was," he says, but stops short because no adjective in his extensive vocabulary is equal to what he wants to say.

"You're not kidding," she says, crawling back onto his chest. "That was. It _was_."

He kisses her again, which reminds him of what it was–in addition to love and lust–that had propelled them to the bedroom. "Roll over, Kate," he says, nudging her a little until she's on her back. "Your tattoo. I have to see it."

There it is, exactly where she'd said it was, on her left hip. "Oh, my God. You weren't kidding. It's my initials." He touches her hip half reverently, half with barely contained desire. "When did you get this?"

"Last fall."

"When, exactly?"

"November third."

"Why then?"

"It was four days after the bank robbery. When you and your mother were hostages. When the explosion went off, oh, God, I was terrified that you were dead. I was almost sure that you were dead. I couldn't have stood that. I couldn't. I couldn't have survived without you. That's when I really acknowledged just how much I loved you. And I thought, I don't know if I'll ever have him, but at least I can have this. It was as if this way I could have you with me everywhere."

A six-foot-two-inch man who can bench press 280 pounds and chases homicidal maniacs around New York City is not supposed to cry, particularly when he has just had the best and most meaningful sex of his life. He bites the inside of his mouth until he can pull himself together.

"You all right, Castle?" She's pushing the hair off his forehead.

"Fine. I'm fine. So, your tattoo. Why there? Why not on your shoulder or your back or, I dunno, your right hip?"

"I didn't want it to be visible unless I was naked, which ruled out my shoulder or my back or my shin or my boob or just about anywhere else. The hip seemed like the perfect place."

"And you chose the left one. Any reason?"/

"Of course there was a reason."

"What?"

"I wanted it on the same side as my heart."

No amount of jaw clenching or biting the inside of his mouth will stop the tears this time. He closes his eyes, and feels her thumb at the corner of one of them.

"Are you crying?"

"Yes."

"Because of what I said?"

"Yes."

"I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not. I'm so touched."

"Good. So am I."/

She's quiet for a moment, cuddled up against his side. "You learned a lot about me today."

That makes him laugh so hard that he starts to cough. "Oh, yeah. I did. Stuff I won't be able to tell anyone but a journal that I lock in my safe. I'd be arrested if anyone read it."

"That's not what I meant, you perv. I meant the questions and answers. What did you call it, personalized _Jeopardy_?"

"I loved those, Kate."

"Well, how about a little personalized _Jeopardy_ for me?"

"Really? You already know so much about me. I'm a much bigger sharer than you, as you may have noticed."

"C'mon. There's tons of things I don't know. And I want to know them, especially now."

"Okay." He wraps his arm around her shoulder. "Let me think. Here's one. Four hundred forty-eight."

"I can't even guess. The first apartment building you lived in? Number four forty-eight?"

"Something way more interesting than that. And by the way, the first apartment building I lived in was nineteen. Nineteen West Fifty-fifth Street. Do you give up?"

"Yes."

"Pictures on my phone."

"That can't be right, Castle. You must have thousands of photos on your phone."

"Of you. That I deleted."

"What?" She spins under his grasp, "What do you mean?"

"You remember when I left the precinct the other day? After you told the kid in interrogation that you remembered your shooting?"

"Or course I do. It was like acid in my blood."

"I was so furious at you that night that I shut myself in my office and drank about a zillion dollars worth of single malt Scotch. And then I took out my phone and very deliberately deleted four hundred forty-eight photos of you. Talk about acid in the veins."

"Wait a minute. How could you have taken all those photos without my knowing it? Why would you?"

"How? Simple. You probably figured I was playing a game on my phone. A million different things. And why? Because I've been in love with you for a very long time. And I decided to destroy them because right then I thought you didn't love me and never would."

"Well, you were wrong."

"Can I take a picture of you now?"

"Only if you lock it away with that journal in the safe. I'm naked and I must look like I've just been–"

"You have been."

"So have you."

They both laugh so hard they almost choke.

"Castle? I want another personal _Jeopardy_ question. Answer."

"Let me think. And for the record, it's not easy to think with you lying on me like this."

"Want me to move?"

"Not a chance. Okay. Here's one. Thor."

"Thor, like the god of thunder?"

"Yes, but that's not the question. The question is, 'Who was my imaginary dog when I was a kid?' I was desperate for a pet, specifically a dog, but my mother refused. So I made one up. He was great company."

"Why did you name him Thor?"

"I thought it sounded manly. Since he was invisible, I thought he deserved a really impressive name." He looks closely at her now, trying to take in every part of her, to take her in with each of his senses. He can't quite believe what has happened over the past three days.

"Whatcha thinkin' about?" she says, her head resting on his chest, just below his chin.

"I'm thinking about one more personal _Jeopardy_ thing."

"Good, I want one more. What is it?"

"You."

"You as in me?"

"Right. The answer is you, Kate Beckett."

"I guess there could be limitless questions, but I'm pretty sure you have just one."

"You're right."

"OK, so what is it?"

"The question is, 'Who is the last woman that Richard Castle will ever sleep with, for the rest of his deliriously happy life?' "

TBC

 **A/N** One more chapter to go. Thank you all.


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.

She freezes in place. Did he just say–? Did he just pop the question, without actually popping the question? The Earth jolts to a stop somewhere in its elliptical orbit. A thousand miles an hour, that's how fast it spins. Castle told her that once, when they were on an otherwise dull stakeout. Why does she remember? Because it was funny. And interesting. And he smelled so good. Not that she told him, not back then. But they're not drinking coffee from a dented Thermos in her rump-sprung squad car, they're in bed. The same bed. His bed. And he's not talking about planets, he's talking about her being the last woman that he will ever sleep with for the rest of his deliriously happy life. So, did he just pop the question without popping the question?

He feels her go still against him. At first she's not breathing, and then a faint trail of warm air hits him in the center of his chest. Did he just propose, without proposing? He'd leap from the bed right now and go buy her the world's most beautiful engagement ring, except they're lying skin on skin, and he can't possibly give that up. But he doesn't want to let this moment go by unacknowledged, either. This is a new day. A new life, he hopes. A whole new life. He runs his fingers through her hair, and leaves them there, pressing lightly on her scalp. "Kate?"

She can hear him speaking her name, but she can't speak.

"I didn't mean to scare you. Did I scare you?" He rolls onto his side, shifting her slightly as he does so that now they're face to face. Her eyes are huge. "I meant it, you know. I will never have sex with another woman but you. I will never share a bed with another woman but you." Good, she's breathing steadily again. He'll keep going. He'll reassure her. "I will never tell any woman but you that I am in love with her. I will never tell another woman that when she looks at me the way you are, that that's everything I'll ever need. I've never told anyone that before, because it's never been true until now. You're all I need. If that's too much for you, if _I'm_ too much for you, that's all right. I'll be happy with however much you'll give me."

His expression is so hopeful, his eyes so trusting. She uncurls her hand, which had been balled up against his ribs, and slowly opens it wide across his cheek. "You did scare me." That emerges as a scratchy whisper, so she swallows and orders calm into her voice. "But I'm not scared any more." She stops for a moment, holding his eyes with hers, and then slips her hand down his face so that it's cupping his chin and the side of his jaw. "You know what this feels like, Castle?" She strokes the corner of his mouth with her thumb. "It feels like I'm holding infinity in my palm. And if eternity were an hour, I'd spend it all with you. If eternity were limitless, which it is, I'd want to spend it all with you."

A smile starts in the middle of his lips, pulling them up towards his nose, and then spreads outwards in both directions. It's incandescent, this smile.

"Blake," he says, turning that one syllable into delirious happiness. "I don't think anyone has ever quoted Blake to me, definitely not in bed."

"No one better do it again."

"Except you."

"Except me."

"Especially in bed."

"Especially."

"So," he asks hesitantly, "has anyone ever quoted poetry to you, Kate?" He wants the answer to be no, because he wants to be the first. But surely someone has. Someone like–no, he doesn't want to imagine it.

"A Valentine in fourth grade doesn't count, right?"

"What did it say?"

"It's an epic poem. You might be familiar with it. 'Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.' It was from Matthew Anderson. He sat behind me. But he didn't read or recite it, just shoved the card at me, so it shouldn't count."

"Right. Shouldn't count. Doesn't count."

"Then no. No one has."

"I don't believe it."

"What can I say? Apparently I don't attract romantics. Or lovers of literature."

"You have now."

"I have, huh?" She wraps her foot around his ankle.

"I've written you whole books."

"You have. I love them."

"You do?"

"I do, but much as I love them, they aren't poetry."

"That's true. And besides, when I read a poem to you, or recite it, I want it to be just for you, not a whole roomful of people." He moves impossibly closer to her. "And here I am, lying in bed with you, and for me this is it, right here. 'I have no life but this.' You know what this is?"

She shakes her head.

" 'The realm of you.' That's all I want, the realm of you."

That chokes her up so much that it's hard to ask, "Is that from a poem?"

"Yeah. Emily Dickinson. It's called 'I have no life but this.' I haven't read it in years, but it came rushing back to me a minute ago. I never thought that it could apply to me, that I would love someone that way. But I do."

She buries her face in his chest. She wants to burrow there, get inside his skin, live inside his skin. She asks him a question, feels the vibration of her mouth against the steady beat of his heart, and then feels his hand stroking her bare back.

"Sorry, I couldn't hear what you said."

She raises her head. "Could we just stay here forever?"

"Much as I want to say yes, even love-drunk as I am I can see that it's almost noon. Can't believe I'm still wearing my watch. But since it's almost noon, my mother could come swooping through the front door any second."

Kate reacts as if she's stepped on a downed power line in a thunder storm, and jumps–truly jumps–out of bed. "Oh, my God. I have to take a shower. Right now. Wait, where are my clothes? Shit." She grabs her sweater from the floor and shakes it. "Shit. It's all wrinkly. I need a hanger. Do you have a hanger? I can hang this in the bathroom while I'm showering and the steam will smooth it out, right? Won't it? Where are your hangers, Castle?"

"Kate. Kate. Kate," he repeats, circling his fingers around her wrist. "Yes, I have hangers. Lots of them. What's more important is that I have a steamer. In the bathroom. This will look perfect in one minute. I promise."

"Okay, okay. I have to get in the shower." She bolts for the bathroom, and seconds later he hears her shriek.

"Castle! Castle. Get in here. Look what you did!"

"What?" He finds her gaping at herself in the mirror.

"Look!" She points to a red blotch on the side of her neck and another on her shoulder. "Hickeys, Castle. Hickeys."

"You didn't object while I was giving you those little love bites."

"Little? Little? This one is the size of a, a, I don't know, a cantaloupe. It looks like Godzilla was sucking on my neck."

"In my defense," he whispers seductively, bending slightly so that his lips are grazing the top of her ear, "you kept moving. Squirming. Wriggling. Writhing. I couldn't keep my mouth in one place."

She glares at his reflection and steps inside the shower. Since she's short on time, she doesn't want to get her hair wet and turns on only the lower jets in the vast, tiled stall. There's a recessed double shelf in one wall that must have two dozen kinds of soap and gel, and she chooses a British one that claims to smell of roses, wild lavender, and newly mown grass. She uncaps the tube and inhales. "Wow, it really does. Next time I'm spending half an hour in here," she says, surprised that she's not surprised by her casual acknowledgment that there will indeed be a next time. Many, many, many next times. She's so intoxicated by the thought that she doesn't realize that Castle has opened the door and joined her.

"Your sweater is perfect," he says, reaching around from behind her and cupping her soapy breast. "And speaking of perfection, this is flawless. This is the ne plus ultra, the quintessence of breastdom." His other hand slithers up her stomach and tweaks her other nipple. "It would be a crime to cover it–them–up. Besides, you're in law enforcement, and you're not supposed to be committing any crimes."

She's struggling not to spin around and give in to every urge, primal and otherwise, that's weakening both her self-control and her knees. "Don't start anything, Castle," she says, wanting to sound stern and failing.

"Judging from what's going on beneath my fingers," he says, oozing sultriness, "I'd say that something already has started."

This is not working. She's going to have to be the grown-up here, although with him pressing himself against her back–and her backside–the way he is, ooooohhhh, she's having very, very grown-up thoughts. Not that kind of grown-up, she rebukes herself. "Castle, I have an idea."

"I love your ideas. Especially the ones you've had this morning."

"I'm going to get dressed, and if your mother's home now I'll have her come in and towel you dry." And with that she leaves him sputtering, and dresses in a giggly rush, determined to be a portrait of serenity in the kitchen or living room when Martha comes back.

She's had all of twenty seconds to compose herself when the human kaleidoscope unlocks the door. "Hello, Martha. I was hoping I'd catch a glimpse of you before I left." She'd had no thought of leaving, may God not strike her dead for that lie. "You look lovely."

"Thank you, Katherine. Aren't you sweet. I just had my hair done. The man is a genius. Worth every penny of my son's money." The timbre of her voice changes subtly as her eyes take in the remains of the meal at the table. "Did you and Richard have a nice breakfast?"

It's only then that she notices that his chair is on the floor, that he must have knocked it over when they left for the bedroom. Uh oh. "Yes, yes. We did. He's an amazing, uh, cook."

"Yes, he is. I'm sure you ate well."

If she responds to that she'll choke, so she lunges for a plate and mug instead. "Where are my manners? I should clear the table."

"Don't be silly, darling, you're a guest. Where's Richard?"

"He went to look something up in his office. We were talking about a, er, a book that we both read ages ago and of course we disagreed about something so he was going to find it and look it up. He probably got engrossed in it. You know how he is."

"Mmmhmm."

Kate can't actually hear an eyebrow being raised, but she knows it is. She hastily and shakily stacks some dishes. "I'll just put these in the sink."

"Are you off today? Not going to the precinct?"

"No. I had some time saved up so I thought I'd have, you know, a little staycation. I think I'll go to the Museum of Modern Art this afternoon. I never get the chance. Usually. So crowded on weekends. When I usually have time off." She's turning into a professional liar, a very bad one, and she's terrified of looking Martha in those blue eyes that could fasten her to a wall as easily as a glue gun.

"I'm going out myself. I just stopped in for a warmer coat. I'm meeting a friend for lunch and it's chillier than I thought."

Not in here, Kate thinks, her face burning and her pants metaphorically on fire. It's hot as hell in here. "Have a good time," she says weakly.

"You, too," Martha says as she gets her coat from the closet by the front door. Then, leaning forward a little as if she wants to share a secret, she advises in her best stage whisper, "But before you go, you might want to fix your jeans."

"My jeans?"

"They're inside out." And with a cheerful wave of a purple-gloved hand, she's gone.

TBC

 **A/N** Oops, this isn't the last chapter, after all. Also, reviewer Swordfighter asked if it's possible to put jeans on inside out and still fasten them. Yes, it is, I have done it twice, because I had taken them off without unfastening them. And that's all I'm saying.


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.

"I still don't understand why you were so embarrassed about what my mother said." He shrugs as he stands opposite her at the kitchen island.

"Are you kidding? She's your _mother_ , Castle. And despite her open-mindedness, I'd rather not have had her learn that we'd just had sex–"

"Mind-altering sex, celestial-body sex."

He's right, but she's not acknowledging it at the moment, and she plows on. "That we'd just had sex in such an, an–." He's so distracting–all citrusy-smelling and with one bit of hair standing straight up at his crown–that she can't summon up the right word. "Such an undignified way."

"You thought what we did was undignified?"

"Castle! Stop it. What I meant was that this was an undignified way for her to find out. It would have been nice if at some point we could have let her know that we're together. Suppose the shoe were on the other foot?"

"You talking about my foot?"

"Yes, your foot."

"I'm not wearing shoes."

If she weren't so smitten with him she'd take off one of her sneakers and throw it at him. "Grrrr."

"Did you just growl, Beckett?" He takes a step towards her. "Because that was incredibly erotic."

"Yeah, well you're lucky that I don't bite."

"Oh, but you do bite. I have the marks to prove it."

"Stop, stop, stop." She grabs her hair with both hands, and when she lets go she slaps both palms on the counter top. "Imagine–and I know that you're capable of it–imagine that you were in my kitchen, standing there with that unmissable I-just-got-laid expression, and wearing, I dunno, your boxers, and my father walked in. You might as well say, 'Hey, Jim, I just shagged your daughter'!"

It's obvious that he's about to say something, so she puts her hand up. "Or imagine that you walked in here and found Alexis's boyfriend wearing his pants or his shirt inside-out. 'Hey, Mister Castle, your daughter's still in the shower. Really hot, by the way. Alexis, I mean, not just the water. She's really, really hot'."

That does the trick. He blanches. "That's not the same."

"Close enough."

"Listen, don't worry about my mother. She brings this up all the time. Us."

"Say what?" It's only years of exercising off-the-charts self-control that keeps her from shrieking. "Your mother talks about the two of us having sex? You know, when she told me about my jeans I was mortified, but this is way worse."

Finally aware that he needs to save this situation, fast, he reaches out and smothers her hand with his. "No, no. I phrased that really badly. I have sex on the brain, can you blame me? My mother doesn't talk about the two of us having sex, she lectures me on telling you how I feel about you. One time we were sitting right over there"–he tilts his head towards his office, "and she said to me, 'For a man who makes his living with words, you sure have a hell of a time finding them when it counts.' It was last May, right after you'd kicked me out of your apartment, the night before Montgomery was killed. I was so angry and so hurt that I came home and tossed back a double Scotch, and then I threw the glass at the big mock-up I had of the _Heat Rises_ cover. I threw it as hard as I could. It must have broken into a thousand pieces. That's when she walked in and asked, 'What the hell's going on here?' So I told her, sort of. And then she gave me some mother-to-son advice. You know what it was?"

She shakes her head. His hand is so warm on top of hers. It sends an exciting, low-level stream of electricity through her, especially when she thinks about where his hand had been very recently. "No."

"She said, 'Don't waste another minute.' I wish I'd done it. I wish that I'd gone right back to your apartment and pounded on the door until you opened it. I wish that I'd said 'I love you' as many times and in as many ways as I could until you believed me."

The hands that had made such an impact on the granite counter now grip the edge of it to keep her from collapsing onto the floor, which is where her glance has landed. She finally draws herself up and looks at the man she's loved far longer than she'd dared to admit, even to herself. Especially to herself. "I wish that you had, too, Castle. It might have taken a while for you to get through to me, but the grief it would have saved us, right? I'm sorry."

"I am, too."

"So," she says, relief and an urge to jump him right here flooding her entire system. "What do you say about getting out of here and going over to my place? As soon as I fix my jeans."

"Do I get to take them off when we get there?"

"I'd be really disappointed if you didn't."

Some time later–she's currently incapable of calculating how long–she's sprawled naked on top of him. "For the record?" she observes, a little groggily. "There was nothing remotely disappointing about that."

"Yeah?" he says, still in recovery. "Not for me, either."

"Speaking of records." She leaves the thought there, tempting him.

" 'Speaking of records'? I think I like the possibility of this."

"Speaking of records, want to break one?"

"Does it require leaving this room?"

"No."

"Or this bed?"

"That's optional."

"Okay, I'm in."

She kisses his shoulder. "Good, because it requires a lot of your being in."

"It does, huh? And the record we're trying to break is?"

"How many times you can make me come."

"Oh, my God, this is the best challenge ever. How much time do I have?"

"Three hours."

"And how many times do I–?"

"Five for a tie."

"Does the one a few minutes ago count?"

"Oh, definitely."

"So, five more to break this record?"

"You got it."

"I'm going for sex. I mean six. And sex. But six."

That was almost eight months ago, and she smiles at the memory of it. They'd both been so giddy and exhausted when he'd checked his watch and said, "I did it. With three minutes to spare."

"You're so proud of yourself, aren't you?"

"Damn right I am."

"You deserve to be. I don't know if I'll be able to walk for at least a day."

"I hope that's not a complaint."

"Not a complaint. 's a compliment. Now go to sleep."

"Halfway there."

"Same here."

That had been in early April, and now it's December first. It's 4:30 in the morning, and she's wide awake, watching him sleep. He's lying on his right side, one hand curled up against the end of her pillow. The blue-and-white-striped sheets on the bed are the same ones that they'd slept on on that exceptionally memorable spring day.

It's not the same bed, though, nor even the same room. A week ago, two days after Thanksgiving, she had officially moved in with him. Apart from her clothes, jewelry, and books, she'd brought very little with her. She had no sentimental attachment to her furniture or rugs or dishes, virtually all of which she had acquired after her former apartment had blown up. The loft easily accommodated the few other things, like these sheets–she has exceptionally strong feelings about them–and a quilt made by her grandmother that had survived the bomb and ensuing fire only because it had been at the cleaners.

Her mind is full of so much that has happened since April, including their discovery that Senator William Bracken is responsible for her mother's death. In the days afterwards, Castle had repeatedly talked her off the ledge, and she is finally content–not content, exactly, but confident–that they will bring the monster down in time. Castle is her rock, and Dr. Burke has helped her learn to trust, dare to trust, her heart. When she'd asked her therapist if he thought that she was crazy because she was nervous about moving in here, he'd told her, with a straight face, that she'd be crazy not to be.

In early September a couple who lived in a large one-bedroom apartment on the third floor decided to relocate to the suburbs. Castle pounced on the place before it could go on the market, and Martha took up residence. Much as she adores Castle's mother, she knows that she couldn't have navigated as well as she has if they'd all been in the same space. It also helps, she's not ashamed to admit, that Alexis is away most of the time, living five miles and a world away in her dorm at Columbia. She and the almost 19-year-old have built a pleasant relationship, but life is easier, especially in this relatively new relationship, without an adolescent under the same roof. Castle has never lived alone, but she has been on her own her entire adult life, and it takes some adjusting. Happy adjusting, it has turned out, but still.

It's after five now, and she wants coffee. She inches out of bed without disturbing the six-foot-two object of her unqualified affection, picks up her bathrobe from a chair, and goes to the kitchen. While her first caffeine fix of the day is brewing, she hears the slap of the newspapers as they land outside the door, and goes to fetch them. On weekends they get two copies of _The Times_. Castle had insisted on it because they both love the Saturday and Sunday puzzles and neither likes to do them on line.

"We could just make a copy on the printer," she'd said one hot August morning when they where still sharing the paper and squabbling over it.

"I'm not doing a crossword that's been copied on white paper," he'd said, looking as horrified as if she'd insisted that he wear a plaid polyester suit. "It has to be on newsprint. It has to have the right feel. And the right smell."

"I don't mind. I'll take the copy."

"You know, Beckett, I never dreamed that I'd have the luck of being with a woman who would immediately appreciate that the answer to the clue 'DISCOVER RIVAL' is 'VISA.' So there is no way that I could bear watching you do the puzzle in anything but the actual, honest-to-God newspaper."

It must be an indication of how much she loves him, and how much his way of thinking has crept in and cuddled up to hers, that his argument had seemed and continues to seem logical. By the time her mug is empty she has completed the top third of the puzzle and she's itching for him to wake up. She'd gotten the idea for today weeks ago and she doesn't want to wait any longer, but her phone tells her that it's 5:48. Still too early.

For some reason the phone reminds her of an evening in June when he'd been writing and she'd walked into his office. He'd been lost in his work, and hadn't noticed her. She'd stood there for at least a minute, drinking in his expression, a combination of intensity and satisfaction. After slipping her phone from her back pocket, she'd taken a photo of him, and a nanosecond later he'd looked up. The joy in his face, his elation at finding her there, had almost made her weep, but she'd had enough wits to press the button again.

"Oh," he'd said. "Oh, my God."

"I'm sorry, Castle. I interrupted you. I didn't think you'd realize that I was here."

"No, no, that's not it. I just remembered something amazing. I thought they were gone." He'd pushed his chair back so fast that it hit the wall behind him, and he'd rushed towards the bedroom. "Come here, come here."

She'd followed him into the walk-in closet, where he'd already opened the small safe that's set into a back corner. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for something I'd forgotten that I had. Here. Yes!" He'd held up a flash drive. "Do you know what this is?"

"Don't know what's on it, but sure."

"What's on it are the four hundred forty-eight photos that I didn't remember that I'd backed up. The sum total of all the ones I'd taken of you up until that awful night a couple of months ago when I deleted them. I thought they were gone forever."

He'd dashed back to his laptop and gone through them all with her, commenting on every one. Those images were and are like a Rosetta stone of their relationship before it was a relationship, when she was pretending that it was a partnership, or a friendship. And when they'd finally seen number 448, he'd swept everything off the top of his desk and they'd had sex that had set a new personal standard for passion.

She looks at her phone again. Okay, it's 6:00. They get up this early for body drops all the time. She scoots over to one of the lower cabinets, pulls out a large roasting pan, hoists it to waist level, and lets it drop to the floor. The noise is so loud she wonders if the neighbors will call to complain. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four–

She hears his feet on the floor before she sees him. "Kate? Are you okay? What happened? What happened?" He's wearing only a pair of green boxers with the bright red message "Unwrap me first."

"Nothing. I'm so sorry I woke you. Dropped a pan." She grabs him by the hand and kisses him. "Morning. Ready for breakfast?"

"Uh, you know it's Saturday, right? We can go back to bed."

"It's not just any Saturday, Castle. Here, sit down." She guides him to a stool and slides a mug of coffee over to him.

"It's not?"

"No."

"What is it?"

"December first."

"Okay."

She opens a drawer full of pot holders and dishtowels, digs down to the bottom, and extracts a large manila envelope. "Here," she says, offering it to him. "Open it."

He undoes the small metal fastener and pulls out a brightly colored, illustrated piece of cardboard. "Aww." He smiles at her. "An Advent calendar. Thank you. I used to have one every year when I was a kid, and I always gave one to Alexis, but when she got to be a tween she announced that she had outgrown such things. It crushed me." He looks it over, as excited as he must have been at age five. "This is one that has a different chocolate every day, right? Those are the best."

"Don't open it!"

"Don't open it? Isn't that the point? The little window marked with a one."

"I'm going to open it."

"Geez, that doesn't seem fair. Who are you, the Grinch who stole Advent?"

"You can open all the others in a few minutes if you want, eat all the candies inside today, but I have to do this one."

"Okay, if it means that much to you."

Very carefully she uses her fingernail to pry open the little door that she'd glued shut yesterday, before she'd hid the calendar. Positioning herself so that he can't see what she takes out, she wraps her fingers around the item. "Give me your hand," she says, and takes hold of it with her free one. "You know what advent is?"

"Of course. The season leading up to Christmas."

"Right. But the word advent means the birth of something or the dawn of something. And that's what today is, at least for me, and if I read you right, for you. For us. You have expanded my idea of love in every way and every direction. I never knew, never truly understood, just what intimacy is, what it can mean, how it can change someone, until I fell in love with you. So today is, I hope, the dawn of something new." She opens her other hand, revealing a simple gold ring lying in her palm. She holds it up between her thumb and index finger and says, "Richard Castle, will you marry me?"

When he nods, she puts the ring on his finger and leans over to kiss him.

"Yes I will," he says, after the long kiss. "Yes."

She looks at him and beams. "Did you just quote James Joyce to me?"

"Yes."

"And we aren't even in bed."

"Maybe we should be."

"I think we should."

 **A/N** Thank you all for coming on this roller-coaster ride. I appreciate all of you who still visit the FF Castle world and read stories by those of us who are also still there. I'll be back soon, and I hope that you will be, too.


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